(SJRK) January 23, 2018 Partners Meeting Notes

Present:

  • Dana

  • Gregor

  • James

  • Juliana

  • Liam

Things to talk about:

Discussion:

  • Reviewing Dana’s latest designs for the Storytelling Tool at the link above

    • Are we intentionally keeping instruction for the user entirely visual (as opposed to having a text prompt)?

      • Efforts were made to reduce screen real-estate usage, but we could certainly add something in

      • Some introductory text could be shown to welcome the user into the experience and provide a bit of instruction

      • Potentially some help info when the user clicks the “?” icon/button

      • Interactive tutorial/help overlay

    • The organization of content into ‘blocks’ based on content type/medium

    • Current design flow has adding the title/author/keywords after adding all the content, but this could be changed to make those fields available during the authoring experience rather than after

    • Similar flow for images

    • Discussion about requiring alt-text and the timing of prompting the author

    • Would each screen have a separate (shareable) URL? Could we start the user from screen two in this flow (to add a photo to an existing story) for example?

      • The storytelling flow is such that the author decides which ‘blocks’ to add and in which order

      • Could we use a URL to tell a collective story?

      • To tell a story collaboratively

      • We may wish to implement this sort of collaboration in the future, but for the time being we’ll start with a more “simple” authorship model

      • In the real world, have a URL or a QR code or some sort of way for people who pass by it to see a particular story and add to it

        • “Tell us about what you see right now”

        • Telling a story over time from multiple perspectives

        • Different users adding comments to strangers’ photos

    • Audio recording - it can be transcribed automatically, do we want to show that right away or have the author decide to add their own transcript

    • Searching - for now, only searching or browsing by keyword

    • Whether we should continue to use categories to categorize stories, or, as in the new design, leave that out

    • Some design/interaction questions about going back to search results or going to next/previous stories

      • Is there a benefit to losing the ability to go back to search results?

      • Maybe that showing “2 of 2” would be the way to get back to the previous one

      • Last/Next story may be potentially confusing depending on whether the user is going through search results or looking at stories in another way

    • Accessibility considerations should be made for zooming/magnifying?

      • Our Learner Options panel (UIO) will be added to the tool to provide options like magnification, text to speech, other accessibility options

    • Who is the user we’re targeting? This may help us answer some of the questions

      • Hopefully eventually a very broadly used tool, but we’re planning a couple of co-design sessions at the IDRC to refine our design

      • Would like the SJRK partners to use the tool as well when working with youth to gather stories - and co-design the tool in the process

      • We’ve also discussed at our meetings about collective stories, maybe used by activist groups to tell stories together

    • Do you consider an offline version? or not yet?

      • Another interesting part of that may be to download stories for viewing later

      • Would offline be android? Ideally any offline implementation of the tool will work across all platforms

      • Something like Wikipedia Offline, maybe

      • If the tool works offline, then once a connection is reached, the stories can be uploaded

      • In Fresno, for example, the school has no internet connection since it’s very remote, but the authors may have a connection in the town, so they would then be able to upload their stories to the “main” site at that point

      • It would be great to be able to download stories to read later

    • Undo/Delete - we currently have an “X” icon on each block, but we may want to change this to activate a select/delete mode where the author can then select one or more blocks to remove

    • Have we thought about developing this as an app?

      • This would affect the storage of stories and would facilitate offline authorship

      • At the IDRC we’ve discussed the possible ways to develop this site into an app

  • SDG Toolkit

    • Rather than trying to tackle all 17 SDG’s at once, it may be easier to pick one to start with

      • Starting perhaps with No. 17 and work backwards (go deep with one and then apply to the others)

    • What resources do others recommend related to SDG’s or to inclusive design? Could we pull these resources together as part of the toolkit?

    • Who is best suited to work with Liam on developing the toolkit?

    • TIG has launched a youth services initiative

  • James:

    • https://www.salto-youth.net/rc/inclusion/

    • The goal of inclusion is clear, but the challenge is “how?”

    • If we can move in the direction of developing tools and resources that show organizations how best include and facilitate equitable utilization, that would be ideal

    • Partnerships, how they’re organized and what their purposes are

    • How do we make sure youth at the margins are moved to the centre and empowered?

    • We should also endeavour to help organizations to know the “how” of inclusion

    • Inclusion strategies

    • Hopefully, this SDG toolkit will be that resource, or provide links to other such resources

  • Updates from Juliana

    • She went to Fresno last week and met with the teachers in two schools that are part of their group

    • No students since the academic period hadn’t started yet

    • Helpful to establish some context, to see how far away the schools are from everything, and the challenge they have with this project

    • Fresno is difficult to get to, about 12 hrs bus ride from home, and by plane is complicated

    • Ideally, the people in Fresno will develop the process and work with the young students on their own, since it’s difficult to get there

    • Developing fun engaging activities with the teachers (pdf docs)

    • Hector working to use local network

    • Mainly coffee farms there, but want to develop other possibilities for students coming out of high school

    • Young people leave Fresno because of what they consider to be limited opportunities (don’t want to become coffee farmers)

    • Typical learning format - pdfs - Maybe the students read them or not, but that may not lead to them engaging in activities

    • Juliana is working on methodologies to develop fun activities and projects around those activities

      • E.g. Working with bees, earthworms (composting)

    • Perhaps the IDRC could help them develop a more inclusive approach? Is that part of our work? (yes!)

      • In particular in designing the interface of the local network

    • IDRC could also potentially provide feedback or input on the activities

    • A big challenge is that we’re talking about a local network (WAN), not the internet

    • People who develop digital resources envision using the internet, so this is a barrier when internet connectivity is low.

    • The geography in the area complicates any possible future work on adding connectivity

    • An offline version of the Storytelling Tool would be useful

    • Someone (tech) who is working locally with Hector may need a fair amount of guidance from Juliana too