Design and Technical Roadmap - Platform Co-op Development Kit

Summary

This roadmap is a living, continuously-refined document that outlines the design and development tasks and timelines for the Platform Cooperative Development Kit. It is a high level document that structures the project's activities into short 1-3 month sprints. After each milestone, we will revisit the timeline and refine it based on feedback from our co-designers. A visual timeline is also available.

Roadmap


November 2018

Activities

  • Synthesis of responses to questions posed to the platform cooperative community about project website UX

  • Two co-design workshops with SEWA in India (Dana and Michelle from IDRC will attend)

    • First session with in-home beauty workers (who are starting a new cooperative)
    • Second session with Members of the SEWA federation of co-ops

Outcomes

  • Summary of feedback from platform cooperative community about website UX posted to project wiki
  • Design specifications and feature lists, co-created by SEWA participants, for the governance and scheduling tools

December 2018

Activities

  • Iterative design of UX for the Platform Cooperative Development Kit website
  • Synthesize and share the results of the co-design workshops with SEWA in November

Outcomes

  • A summary synthesis blog post/wiki page containing outcomes, next steps, and design sketches and stories from the co-design workshops with SEWA

January & February 2019  

Activities

  • Refined designs of the new website
    • Focus will be on reworking/updating existing key content on the site (such as updated navigation, improved look and feel, cooperative stories)

Outcomes

  • Prototype of the new website to further discussion

March & April 2019

Activities

  • Create a collection of embedded co-design activities and design prompts to be used by Cataki, Co-Rise, and the Cooperative Life
  • Redevelop the website using a modern CMS framework (such as WordPress or Hugo)

Outcomes

  • Embedded co-design activities and structure available for use by partner co-ops

May & June 2019

Activities

  • Cataki and Co-Rise will start embedded co-design activities with their communities/members
  • Design initial user experience for the Learning Commons
  • Continue the design and development of new website features/UX

Outcomes

  • Initial design prototypes for the learning commons
  • Architectural design of the learning commons

July & August 2019

Activities

  • Partner co-operatives will continue embedded co-design activities
  • Design team will expand the design of the learning commons based on feedback from the community
  • Plan a series of feedback and co-design sessions ("Phase 2 co-design") with participating cooperatives focused on the learning commons and labour platform

Outcomes

  • Launch initial "minimum viable user experience" (MVUX) of the new website (first of several incremental releases adding more features and content to the site)

September, October, November 2019

Activities

  • Partner co-operatives will continue embedded co-design activities
    • Series of CoRise co-design planning meetings with facilitators
  • Participate in the Platform Co-op Consortium conference, conduct co-design with conference participants regarding the Labour Platform
  • Support co-design (Coopathon) of the Index, facilitated by Danny Spitzberg
  • Synthesize and share the results of the first round of embedded co-design
    • Suara, SEWA
  • Participating cooperatives will provide feedback and design refinements to the learning commons and website via phase 2 co-design activities
  • Start sketching the platform tools

Outcomes

  • A summary synthesis blog post/wiki page containing outcomes, next steps, and design sketches and stories from the co-design with partner coops and conference co-design
  • Blog & People features added to the project website
  • First version of Resource Library designs
  • First version of Directory/index user needs and input from conference participants

December 2019, January & February 2020

Activities

  • Design and research for the labour platform tools and hub
  • Implementation of a "minimum viable" version of the resource library
  • Start design and development of the new interactive cooperative map for the website
    • Initial UX design of map
    • Environmental scan and comparative evaluation of mapping technologies/tools
    • Technical "spikes" using various mapping technologies to determine the most appropriate tools

Outcomes

  • Design requirements for the platform tools and hub
  • Designs of initial version of the Resource Library
  • Designs and start of functional implementation of the Map/Index
  • A summary blog post/wiki page containing outcomes, next steps, and design refinements from co-design potluck

March & April 2020

Activities

  • Solicit feedback from platform cooperative community about the resource library, index/map and website
  • Release of Resource Library
  • Design and implementation of platform tools & hub
  • Refinements to the map/index

Outcomes

  • Summary of third round of feedback from platform cooperative community about website UX posted to project wiki
  • Landing page for labour platform hub and platform tools
  • Co-design feedback with partner coops of the platform hub and tools
  • Launch of Resource Library

May, June 2020

Activities

  • Launch of Map/Index
  • Refine and improve the design and implementation of:
    • website
    • labour platform tools and hub
    • interactive cooperative map
    • resource library

Outcomes

  • Updated versions of the website, interactive map, labour platform tools and hub and the resource library