24 September 2021 3 minute read
What we did
- We’re continuing to input data from our user testing interviews and focus groups into the analysis framework. We’re also liaising with UK Youth to arrange more interviews.
- We’ve created a feedback survey for the young people who took part in the My Best Life process, through the Young Person Steering Group and the user testing interviews. The survey will ask them what they liked and didn’t like about the process to create the app, and how they feel about the final product. We’ll be distributing the survey to young people soon.
What we’re thinking about
Last week, we were in conversation with a group of technology organisations and youth charities, discussing how to make data-sharing easier and less burdensome for charities. The topic was Signpost+, an idea to use metadata to “scrape” data from charity websites and make data collection easier. A small organisation would add a schema to their website, allowing those with more technical ability to scrape and collect data about, for example, the opening times of services. The session gave us plenty of food for thought and we look forward to further collaboration.
Challenges
The conversation on data architecture raised some questions about how we were defining the problem we wanted to solve and whether the solution(s) we had proposed could solve that problem. Anything we come up with must be user-friendly. We don’t want to leave anyone behind, especially not smaller charities who might already have reduced capacity to engage with data solutions. Some charities don’t even have a website from which data could be scraped. If we were able to speak with more representatives from smaller charities, we would have a better idea of the situation they face and how best to address it.
Another issue is that the data scraped may have to be further amended before it is useful to others; we know this from working on My Best Life, where we’ve sometimes had to rephrase the descriptions of activities to make them sound more appealing to young people. We would also need to consider the recency of the data collected—some tools publish data in near-real time, but we might have to do extra work with organisations to make sure they know how to use that functionality.
Wins from this week
- The analysis framework is coming along nicely! We’re starting to recognise key themes across the feedback gathered from young people.
