Project Updates - Platform Cooperative Development Toolkit

April 2020

Summary of Activities

  • Start of implementation of tool library
  • Directory/Map
    • Accessibility design crit
    • Design and implementation of individual profile creation
    • Design of search/filter flow
  • Planning next co-design steps with CoRise

March 2020

Summary of Activities

  • Launch of resource library
  • Directory/Map
    • Continue refinement of profile creation flows
    • Filter taxonomy design

February 2020

Summary of Activities

  • Implementation of map using Django

January 2020

Summary of Activities

December 2019

Summary of Activities

November 2019

Summary of Activities

October 2019

Summary of Activities

September 2019

Summary of Activities

August 2019

Summary of Activities

  • Co-design
    • Coordinating with new coops to start co-design process (Suara and Equal Care)
    • Continue to coordinate co-design efforts with CoRise, SEWA, and Cataki
  • Resource library
    • Second round of community co-design chats to gather feedback on the wireframe prototype and taxonomy
    • Continue with wireframing of learning commons
  • Website
    • Sent out survey to gather feedback

July 2019

Summary of Activities

  • Website
  • Resource Library
    • Sketching and initial wireframing of the learning commons
    • First round of community co-design chats with members of the platform co-op community, to seek input on input and ideas for the learning commons
    • Creation of actionables based on co-design chats
  • Co-design
    • Continue to coordinate co-design efforts with CoRise, SEWA, and Cataki

June 2019

Summary of Activities

May 2019

Summary of Activities

  • Website development continues for the initial release
  • Learning commons
    • Planned the UX strategy for the Learning Commons
    • Conducted a horizon scan of other learning platforms for the Learning Commons
  •  Co-design
    • Continued planning co-design sessions with partners, and developing specific activities to do for the embedded co-design efforts

April 2019

Summary of Activities

  • CMS selection
  • Refinement of website designs
    • Completed the UX and UI of the pages
  • Start of website implementation based on initial scope
  • Connecting with project partners about co-design process
    • Submitted Research Ethics Board proposal for approval
    • Developing co-design activities
    • Initial collaborative meetings with project partners

March 2019

Summary of Activities

  • Website work
    • Created visual design for the pages across the website
    • Created style guide for website UI system
  • working on Research Ethics Board proposal for co-design with partner

February 2019

Summary of Activities

  • Start of embedded co-design with partner co-ops
  • Website work:
    • Refinement and iteration of wireframes and information architecture
    • Created copy deck to collaborate on content across the team
    • Communicated and met with logo designer to align on visual design efforts
    • Start on the visual design system

January 2019

Summary of Activities

December 2018

Summary of Activities

November 2018

Summary of Activities

October 2018

Summary of Activities

September 2018

Summary of Activities

August 2018

Summary of Activities

  • First of regular series of checkin meetings
    • Established mailing list as best internal communication method, combined with wiki for open information sharing
    • Discussed re-design of existing site (platform.coop) as next step, with a soft launch (re-worked navigation and new look) on October 15
  • Michelle and Dana met with Namya from SEWA to plan upcoming on-site co-design meetings
    • on-going conversation to share co-design ideas and plan best approach
    • SEWA needs a basic site to share information - need a simple and cheap hosting solution
  • The full team met with Mundano from Cataki, Brazil to discuss design and development requirements for the Catadores (recycling collectors)
  • Gathering partner co-ops needs/requirements, mapping these out to identify commonalities (and differences)
  • Continuing research on existing co-ops and platforms
  • First mockup sketches of platform.coop re-design

July 2018

Summary of Activities

Description

In July, the IDRC started formal work on the Platform Cooperative Development Toolkit project. Our activities this month focused on outreach and discussions with prospective project collaborators, technical and user experience mapping, and the establishment of shared design and development infrastructure for the project.

Among others, we had discussions with CoLab, Loconomics, and ShareTribe regarding the possibility of jointly developing open source tools that would be included in the toolkit's labour platform and governance tools, and implementing existing platform services as "scaffolding" to help bootstrap other aspects of the labour platform. On July 20, Colin traveled to Chicago to meet with the SEIU's Healthcare group and the International Cooperative Alliance to assist them in the early stages of designing a technology platform for the CoRise Cooperative.

The initial stages of our design process for the Toolkit followed a explore, map, share cycle in which the project's design possibilities are creatively explored, maps of potential user experience workflows are sketched, and technical components are elaborated at a relatively high level of abstraction. These works in progress are  shared on the project's open wiki for feedback and refinement. In particular, our design work this month included:

  1. Research and "cooperative analysis" of existing platforms and cooperatives
  2. Sketching initial user experience maps that look at the toolkit from the perspective of different users—particularly prospective co-op members, founders, and supporters. These maps are intended to help map out the design problem space for the project, and are intentionally provisional and lo-fi during at this early stage of the project's design in order to quickly explore different approaches and ideas.
  3. Mapping out the relationships among technical components of the project's labour platform
  4. Examining the existing open source tools and platforms that may be available for us to use or integrate into the Toolkit

In addition, the essential collaborative infrastructure for the project's ongoing open source and development was also set up, including an issue tracker (Atlassian's JIRA) for tracking tasks and bugs, a new GitHub organization for sharing source code, and a mailing list for discussing technical and user experience issues.