7th Month Update: All The Things!
January was an odd month. Here is what happened:
The team attended a fellowship retreat (i.e., Code for Canada recalled all of cohort three back to the mother ship in Toronto)
I presented a two-hour workshop to Civic Hall Toronto; the themes of which were âTechnical considerations for digitizing processesâ, âWhat are APIs?â, and âAn introduction to open source software developmentâ
I poured ~20 hours into building a user interface for a conference tracker app, which was informed by 3 interviews with 6 users, and will be iterated on
We are now in the thick of things with SurveyMonkey Apply, as we started using the 90 day implementation service, and our building in earnest with it
One: Story time
The main goal of the retreat was to ensure our stories are great going into the March 10th-11th Code for Canada Showcase. The showcase is intended to do as it sounds: showcase the work done by each of the four teams over the previous 9 months. As prior entries of this blog attest to, we have a few stories baked into our teamâs experience. We can talk about our user experience (UX) research journey. We can talk about a lack of clarity and digital capacity within our division, and how it cripples the goal of turning the current grants and contributions program (i.e., MSP) into an intelligible web app. We can talk about running workshops and building digital capacity and literacy within our government division. We can talk about the options analysis experience and our push to a software as a service (Saas), public cloud solution (i.e., SurveyMonkeyâs Apply). We can talk about how disjointed and opaque certain processes are within the government. We can talk about overcoming numerous blockers in our push to get Apply.
After some back and forth, the team decides to tell a story through the lens of a fictional character - a woman named Sara who applies to the current manifestation of the MSP program. The focus is human-centered design. In other words, the focus is on how rigorous understanding of users is mandatory for a soundly built technological solution. The secondary theme is how digitizing a process introduces constraints to that process, and how those constraints can be virtuous. The following two slides show how working with a database to generate usable data forces us to reimagine how weâre asking questions:
Two: Presenting at Civic Hall Toronto
I was asked by Code for Canada to stay in Toronto after the retreat to host a learning session for members of Civic Hall Toronto. With only 5 participants in total, it was an intimate affair. Nonetheless, we got through all the material. I got some excellent feedback, and it seemed like the participants really took a thing or two away from the session. Here is a link to that slide deck.
Three: The Conference Tracker
I spent a lot of time on trains and buses, as well as at the office, adding to the conference tracker. Essentially, management wants me to build a solution to conference canvassing. Conference canvasing is a long process where conference information is disseminated to and through managers, and ends up with employees. From their employees must flag an interest, and the manager and the employee must work out the logistics (e.g., times and expenses). Make that process happen multiple times a month with a handful of employees, and it can really become a hassle for managers. I learned the full depth of the problem through three 1-hour interviews, each with two employees who have a different relationship to the current process of conference canvassing. From there I formulated my MVP (minimum viable product): a directory that simply displays conference data (past and upcoming), and acts as a repository for conference reports generated by attendees. The app is currently up on Netlify, where the master version is rebuilt and hosted whenever I push a change to master.
Four: Building with SurveyMonkey Apply
We are concurrently building with a specialist from SurveyMonkey. I still have a lot to learn, and will do so as the need arises. I have helped with piping data, using hidden fields, formulating equations, and performing minor style changes. There will be a lot more work to be done, but I donât know the exact nature of it until the time comes.




















