For ‘Hack to the (safer) future!’ http://openideo.com/challenge/womens-safety/ideas/hack-to-the-safer-future

User experience map

Please note: this is a draft user experience map, which is subject to amendment by the national staff and participants running hack days in their cities.

Overview of user experience map

Engaging women in hack days

A woman hears about their city’s ‘hack day’ for Safe Cities on the radio or sees it advertised on a poster in their market, and decides they would like to attend in order to share their experiences, connect with other women who fear violence in their cities, technology companies and communications organisations, as well as NGOs, activist groups etc, and take part in developing a solution.

Attending the hack day

She arrives and registers at the hack day, where she hears keynote speakers from women’s rights groups, technology companies, and Safe Cities campaigners. She is fully briefed about the aims of the hack day, and the importance of her contribution. She chats and connects with the participants around her.

Image taken from: http://www.mspschool.org/wp-content/gallery/school/stnicholasenteringschol.jpg

Group work to create solutions

Once the key note speakers have spoken, the women in the room have been asked if they would also like to speak to the group in plenary. The facilitators then organise the participants into groups. These groups contain a balance of female and male participants, technology company representatives, facilitators, NGO staff with advocacy expertise, in order to create groups with diverse experience and skills to shape the development of solutions.

Developing the proposals

In their groups, the participants present their ideas back in plenary. They receive feedback and ideas on how to strengthen them from the other participants, and they continue to develop their work for another couple of hours. This second part of the ideation process involves drawing up a budget, and process for implementation, making it clear whether the solution would need the group to lobby the government to support implementation, or if it would need support from other citizens, companies, NGOs and organisations.

Image taken from http://www.foodtechconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MeatHack-4610.jpg

Final presentations and selection of ideas

Participants, or a selected panel, vote on their favourite solution, based on criteria of effectiveness, feasibility (how possible it is), and other criteria decided by the hack day facilitators.

Following on from the vote, participants can choose whether to be part of a core project team to implement the solution. Other participants can opt to be kept updated and potentially consulted on the project via SMS, email or IVR (depending), allowing women to choose their level of ongoing involvement in the product.

Image taken from http://engineering.nulogy.com/images/hackday7/hackday_votes.jpg

Implementation and communication post-hack day

The technology companies and communications organisations that attended the hack day would have a more long-term involvement with the Hack Days than just attendance on the day; they would be asked to support the build and development of a chosen solution, contributing their expertise and resource.

ActionAid would also look at the other key requirements for implementation. For example, if it required government lobbying of some kind, then we (ActionAid) would support the women to campaign and advocate for that solution to have government support.

We would collect the names and contact details of the people who attend, in order to build a movement and provide support and training to lobby for project funding or implementation if needed, as well as build a long term, sustainable campaign for Safe Cities for women and girls. Younger participants may benefit from joining our youth network Activista, and all participants could benefit from the training resources provided by our Global Platforms as well as our online capacity building materials.

Thanks for reading!