-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 91
User Testing in Seattle
Tiffany Chu edited this page Aug 29, 2014
·
4 revisions
- (911 Fire Dispatches, Code Violations, 911 Police Incidents) "Most interested in what's going wrong in my neighborhood and what may negatively impact qualify of life." -Sid Burgess
- "Police incidents because it is interesting to see what is going on, Land use because there is lots of construction going on around me." -Amy Voros
- (Code Violations, Building Permits, Land Use Permits) "I would be interested in what businesses/organizations are being built around me and if they violated any codes. Basically are they being a bad or good citizen. It would also be interesting to know what's being built around me to get a sense of what sort of community I live in and how things are shifting." -Tim Ganter
- "911 Police Incidents was my first choice because safety in my neighborhood is my #1 concern. Land Use was second because I am interested to learn how land/space is being utilized. Lately I've been seeing a lot of new apartments and mixed-use buildings. Building Permits to see if I will get a heads up on what specific businesses are being built or remodeled. Depending on the quality of information I might unsubscribe." -Thomas Wu
- (911 Fire + 911 Police) "Neighborhood safety and property protection, mostly. Always good to understand what's going on." -Jodi Kogan
- 15/19 people signed up with their home address
- 4/19 people signed up with their work address
- "It would be helpful for the UI to tell me what i had already signed up for." -Reed
- "I don't know how many texts I'm going to be getting; afraid of being spammed. It'd be nice if the text linked to a mobile-friendly digest of what's happening, and if there was some disclosure about what I'll be getting in terms of the texts. Or frequency." -Kate Hotler
- "Wondering what the texts will say, and if there will be anywhere I'll be able to get more details about info I get in messages." -Molly
- "I'm curious as to why Texting was chosen as way of notification. Email I can understand, it's like receiving a newsletter. But typically I text to communicate with people only." -Thomas Wu
Week 1 Takeaways: people want to know what's going on! but are quite aspirational in what they think this service will provide them. must set the right expectations at the start. previewing example texts + estimating frequency will help with this.
- "I felt bombarded with 911 incidents that didn't have much context. For example, I was alerted of nearby assaults, narcotics, theft, etc..and all the SMS says is that "it was cleared". Does "cleared" mean they caught the criminal? Not likely. It made me more aware, but it didn't make me feel safe. In fact, I was actually spooked to go outside on a couple of late nights because of so many incidents nearby." -Thomas Wu
- "I almost unsubscribed because they kept coming in between 2-4 am while I was asleep. They were not released until it was politically safe to do so, which is fine, but if I needed to be alerted of something, which I think I was half expecting it to do, it would be too late for me to use it as an emergency notification system. I got 0 for the other set of notices, and 23 or so for the 911 calls."
- "Notifications were a little jargony with minimal detail and no real way to find out more. Maybe if there was a id number for the incident that linked to something with more detail that would be helpful." -Reed
- "I had to unsubscribe because the 911 texts were over the top. I got a lot of duplicated texts, and texts at all hours. Plus since I live in Capitol Hill, there were mostly just Cal Anderson related tweets. This ended up being noise and I ignored them. I also was frustrated because I am concerned about my safety, especially as a single women who is visibly gay when there's been an increase in gay bashing in my neighborhood. Getting texts that things happened and have been cleared doesn't help me stay safe. After the fact doesn't help me." -Liz Rush
- "I had thought I might receive 911/fire notices while events were actually transpiring in my neighborhood but the notices usually arrived hours after the fact so the information didn't provide any immediate security use. It did, however provide a more general security use, as I saw a pattern of a fair number of nighttime neighborhood incidents, some of which were violent or burglaries. (There's much more going on all night long around my home than I'd ever guessed!) As a result I will no longer be walking my dog after dark!!" -Janet Duecy
- "I would have liked a link to a map to help me visualize where they were as well." -Reed
- "I would like to be able to sign up for multiple feeds all at once." -Reed
- "The sign up was fine, but annoying that I couldn't do multiple selections." -Liz Rush
- "Extremely helpful. I think that is perfect. Another option would be by neighborhood, but I think distance is better." -Jim
- "Incredibly helpful- the radius of interest for crime is much smaller than for permits." -Matt Loveless
- "Yes, I was able to change the radius to avoid getting Cal Anderson in my range. Unfortunately that means that I had to lose all of Pike/Pine." -Liz Rush
- "Very helpful! Though, as you probably can imagine, custom lines would make more sense. Perfect circles make it harder to avoid areas that are not related to my neighborhood at all or would include calls and information not interesting. An alternative would be to allow people to subscribe based on more agreed upon boundaries. e.g. neighborhoods in NextDoor." -Sid Burgess
Week 2 Takeaways: People found the radius feature helpful, yay. Some desired further customization - we should provide option for drawing own area. Too many 911 police texts! Needed to filter and adjust these. police incidents (and emergency notifications in general) are a very tricky area. Lack of context and delay (4hrs) in reporting is a challenge to providing high-quality notifications. We added a GO (General Offense #) + time frame of incident, which helped add some context.
- generally, folks received fewer texts and no 2am texts.
- "I did click on the link in one of them. It was to a full incident report for a fire. It was cool, and I would have loved to been able to see it on a map or something once I was there." -Amy Voros
- "Yes, the links provided much more detail from the authoritative source." -Jim Levy
- "Didn't click the links until just now. The info on the web pages is not helpful." -Tim Ganter
- "I would if it continued to improve on providing context. But I wouldn't continue using it in its current state." -Thomas Wu
- "Maybe. If I continue to want the information and there is a balance between useful and annoyance." -Jim Levy
- "Yes - it is interesting to see this side of my neighborhood." -Caine
- "Maybe. I mostly want email and webhooks, though." -Seth Vincent
- "Yes, I think I would. I don't know for how long. But for now it would be interesting to receive information about what's happening in my neighborhood." -Janet Duecy
- mostly yes. it is useful to be able to select a different radius for each topic. however, it is initially very annoying to not be able to sign up for more than one topic. perhaps we can provide both options.
Week 3 Takeaways: