E-consultation design
Contents
The E-Consultation Design
Consultation Themes
The Wheel wanted to use four themes in their report to the Task Force on Active Citizenship (see Figure 8.3.2). The site, therefore, was also structured along the four themes:
- Who is an active citizen?
- What should the role of the state be in active citizenship?
- How can The Wheel facilitate active citizenship?
- Reflect on the terms of reference.
No Registration Required
Earlier experience from the Waterways Ireland consultation showed that registration can confuse some participants, so no registration was required. The cost of that is deleting spam every day or two from the site. This was later confirmed by usability tests run on the site in the offices of The Wheel.
The collective 'blog'
The active citizenship site, http://wheel.e-consultation.org/wiki/index.php/Consultation, was built as a collective blog. Weblogs ('blogs' for short) are usually used as public on-line diaries. This was because it was agreed to to collect, but not discuss, stories.
The e-consultation process
Individuals add entries to their blog, that others can read, be it the work of a local councillor, Mary Reid, or the sexual adventures of a Washington D.C. intern (Cutler, 2005). But if you let anyone post to a blog, they can also be used to collect entries from many people.
Blog entries were not all typed and submitted. There were various means of submitting a blog entry, in various formats.
The Technology
The research team used Wordpress, open source blogging software, to run the site.
To make it easier for anyone to submit a story, Ashish Italiya modified the Wordpress software to accept various forms of submissions: by an online form, e-mail, SMS text messages from a mobile ‘phone, and through voice mail.
Other technologies
Two mobile ‘phones were connected to USB ports on a PC at Queen’s University Belfast. One phone had a Northern Ireland number and the other with an Republic of Ireland phone - both countries have different telecommunications systems. Software on the QUB PC picked up text messages sent to the mobile phones and loaded them on to the blog.
People could also telephone a number and leave a message on voice mail. The Queen’s University Belfast voice mail system stored the message as a .wav file and then e-mailed the file to the research team. Upon reception the .wav file was then automatically converted to an .MP3 file and uploaded to the blog. This allowed people to click on a link and listen to the message. So even illiterate people could tell their stories.
You can see the different ways participants could share their views:
EXAMPLE VIEWS GO HERE
Web site Design
Refining the web site
The research team spent some time developing draft pages for this site. Their aim was make it easy for people to understand the point of the e-consultation. It was about active citizenship adn they were to submit their stories or experiences of active citizenship.
Also, the research team spent a lot of time getting the words and images right for the explanations on the site. There were many iterations of writing, first within the team, between Letterkenny and Belfast, and then making corrections (To the spelling, grammar and sense) noted by staff at the Wheel.
The end result of all that work was a site that reads much better than the Waterways Ireland web site. You don’t need to be an experienced consultation respondent to follow it.
