aspire to enquire

Mindless?

So the dust seems to have settled a bit around the UK, after the 'riots' of a few weeks ago.

I think most people have thought a lot about the reasoning behind the violence we saw here, and I've been at a few parties and with different groups of friends where the subject has come up. It largely seems to have followed the Conservative line of "this was mindless violence, the people should be punished, they deserve harsher and quicker sentencing than usual because the actions were so severe"

Well, I've found this rationale a bit problematic, and while I waited for alternative opinions to spread past the blog pages of national newspapers (like this great piece in The Independent and another in The Telegraph) and start influencing real public debate, national attention has seemed to move on to more justifed conflicts further afield.

So I wanted to get my thoughts down and see what responses were, because I'm worried that for the young people who were involved in these acts, not much has changed. And if nothing has changed, this could happen again.

Still from the Keep Aaron Cutting campaign site.

The thing that really struck me wasn't necessarily the 'mindlessness' of the actions, but of the targets. For me it raised some questions.

• What could lead someone to think there is no difference between a lone local hairdresser and a global electronics brand?
• How could someone not differentiate between members of their community and state police? And going further, why are the Police/state seen as the enemy at all?

I believe it's true that many of these acts were not pre-meditated, and many people now in custody probably did just get caught up in the moment. But I also agree that that's not always an excuse. But the idea that kids 'should have known better' doesn't wash for me either.

It seems like the answers to the questions above lead to some pretty long-term conditioning that these kids and their peers have gone through.

If everyone is against you, what difference does it make if you burn Oxfam or Foot Locker? If as soon as you do something, people distance themselves from you and persecute you, why would you ever attempt to reach out and empathise? If at least 1 in five of your friends are out of work and being forced to jump through hoops to receive £2.14 per hour while they look for jobs that don't exist, what faith do you have that polititians are on your side, even before they start calling you 'scum' and 'thugs'?

Just lots of questions really, but I hope that as a country we're able to think about answering them. There's a lacklustre speech from Ed Milliband that touches on some of the issues, but in that very middle-class way that doesn't even come close to the kinds of reform that's needed.

I leave you with this video shot before any of this kicked off:

What do you think?

Market controversy

I've probably mentioned more times than is helpful that I moved to Brixton last September. 

It's good. Really good. Aside from being sort of ideal for work, and having an awesome housemate, I've been lucky to have been here to witness most of the transformation of the Brixton Market area. It's gone from a bustling hub of vegetables, meat, fabric and reggae to a teeming warren of arcades lined with vegetables, meat, fabric, reggae with also coffee, pizza, clothing and art.

It's like some sort of middle class dream. 

Sadly there's some controversy; while the newcomers to the arcades are being featured in the New York Times, the amazing existing traders are battling against all kinds of legal technicalities and rent hikes off the back of this very locally focussed gentrification.

Image from Urban 75 Blog
 

We'll need to keep an eye on it. I really hope that new visitors to the market, drawn in by the new shops, are tempted to try buying from the existing traders as well, and I hope those traders will be able to see this as an opportunity rather than a threat. And behind it all I hope the managing agents will be able as much as possible to let the market evolution mature and run its course a bit before making any snap short-term decisions that could jeopardise the market's multi-cultural future.

That video at the top is from British Pathe, in 1961. If you haven't been to Granville Arcade, this is still a fairly accurate representation. Cheers to James Mitchell for the reminder about this video.

A political iPhone app we can actually use

You may remember that some months ago I was lucky to be able to be involved in the scoping, design and launch of a little iPhone app called MyMP. At the time, we were amongst a very small group of developers who had released something for UK politics in the app store. In fact, MyMP was the first app for a sitting politician in the world. 

Since then, we've been awarded 'honoree' status in the Webby awards, and shortlisted for the Nominet UK Internet awards. We'll find out more about that one in July. As a creative in my first year of professional practice, it's quite nice to have been able to work on the project and for the team to get some recognition.

Anyway. Since the launch of version 1, and with the whole General Election thing, a lot more UK political apps have been launched. I wrote about some of them.

The thing is, even with all the emphasis on new technology, engagement, and so on, very few apps in the UK seem to have any longevity now that our representatives are in the business of representing, rather than campaigning.

Enter MyMP, version 2!

Michael Crockart MP, John Woodcock MP, and Brandon Lewis MP, who were on the app for launch. Jo Swinson MP was on the app too, but isn't in the picture. 

With funding from NESTA, we were able to almost completely start again for version 2. We're open to all MPs now, so we needed a choosing system for users, and a far more versatile CMS for the MPs. Our research from version 1 told us that maps and discussions were what people really responded to. So we looked again at how those worked and to see if we could improve that, which I think we did.

We'd also been given a bit of a slap on the wrist by the Parliamentary Information Service for our use of the Portcullis. So we needed a new app icon. Vix worked on it, it's nice. While we were at that, we thought we may as well make the colours work a little better for a bigger variety of parties too. 

 The challenging (but awesome) thing about mobile is that users could be in all kinds of situations, far removed from being sat comfortably in front of a nice 20inch screen to read through paragraphs of text (like on this blog!). They could be on a bus, walking down the street, in a bar, or sat on the sofa with the TV on. In most of the myriad situations possible, the device isn't the primary focus. So the information (and the way we tried to display it) needs to be clear, direct, and complete common sense to navigate through. Our experience on version 1 told us a lot, and version 2 has presented us the opportunity to rethink and refine what we learned. 

The epic challenge ahead of us is to work with other mobile platforms, recreating as much of the experience we've designed as possible. 

I'd love to know what you think of the app if you've downloaded it. You should be able to look at all the MPs signed up and see how they're using it, and email your own MP if they're not one of them, through the app. What do you like? What would you like to see added? What's not working for you? Let me know!

Turn a problem on its head

Purely thinking politically, tonight's final confirmation of a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in Westminster could work out fairly well for Labour. It's potentially disastrous for the country if the traditional Tory cut machine is allowed to get running, but their insistence on 'big society' throughout the campaign could be fairly good for the third sector if any of it comes into fruition.

The Opposite House cover by Rodrigo Corral, on The Book Cover Archive

For me, there's some similar thinking in this book cover. I've not read the book, but using the title as a brief I can't think of anyone in my class last year who would have reached anywhere near as exciting an execution. It's so refreshing to see problems turned on their head.

For those of us who would have preferred a slightly rosier parliamentary term, I hope we can find ways to see the challenges that will face us as opportunities, ready to get stuck straight back in when the time arises.

This is what we have got to march for

I felt inspired to pass this video on after hearing so much about it this morning. Gordon Brown has had a pretty rough ride over the past year, as any leader and political party should have. But whenever I've seen him speak in the flesh, the sense of his dedication, commitment and gravitas have been overwhelming. This video goes a long way to conveying that sense. 

I hope I won't lose followers over posting this, but I also hope that if people chose to use their vote this week they'll make decisions based on a fair appraisal of the party policies, the leaders, and the teams behind them and their respective experiences. 

It's going to be a very interesting and exciting night on May 6th.

Political iPhone apps reviewed

As General Election build-up has been building up, there has been lots of talk about how it will be the UK's first 'digital election'. 

That may or may not be true - there is still tremendous value in everything that's going on on the doorstep - but there are definitely a number of things happening online that weren't available online or otherwise during the last election.

One of those things is the emergence of the app, and their subsequent use by the main political parties for campaigning purposes.

Having just scoped and designed an iPhone app for MPs to use when they're doing 'running the country' stuff instead of campaigning, I thought I'd see how these new apps measure up.

First off, I need to establish what I'll be looking for. Even though the apps are essentially there to do the same thing, they have quite different approaches, visually and functionally. So I'm going to ask more general questions and then see how the apps answer them.

The questions are: 

Does this app excite me about the Party?
Can I engage in their policies?
 Do I feel valued by the Party?
 Is it possible for me to get more involved if I want to?

Does this app excite me about the Party?

Well, there's no denying here that the Conservative home screen is cleaner, more modern looking, and probably a little more on brand generally. The Labour home screen has followed the more traditional iPhone interface guidelines, which to some will seem quite traditional. 

However, in terms of getting a sense of the depth of the apps, I think Labour wins, by implying through the 'slide' interface that there is much more information available at the next stage. The menu options on the Labour app are clearer, too, giving the user a greater sense of what they can expect from the app right at the outset.

What about the Liberal Democrat app?

When I started thinking about this post, there was only a Lib Dem app for the European Elections last year. Now, they have a manifesto app as well. 

It has a nice clean introductory page that allows you to chose what you want to hear about, and then watch a video of Nick Clegg talking about it. Unfortunately, though, that's about it. There's not much else to compare in terms of app features with the other two main parties, so I'm going to leave it here. Friends of mine who have downloaded the app quite like its simplicity, so there you go.

Onwards...

Can I engage in their policies?

Well, aside from the epic accessibility fail on the Conservatives' part (white text over white background), it's fairly easy to quickly get a sense of the policy responses available to explore. The tories have used the Apple picker, and Labour have used the scrolling list. If I was being picky I'd say you could see a lot more of what's available on the Labour app, but I think people quite like playing with those picker things.

Can we engage with the party policies? I quite like that Labour have a little line at the top giving an introduction to the tone of all the policies. If a user is into fairness, fair rules, fair chances and a fair say for everyone, then hopefully they'll be getting the sense that this is the party for them. 

Not much to say about these next screens. I suspect that I'll want to have a go at that ridiculous lens-flare on most screens. In this instance there are more tangible things pledged by the Conservatives than Labour, but that's not the case on all policies.

In the case of news, the Labour app uses pictures, which is nice, more engaging than the blue. It's also way clearer that the Labour headlines are links to stories. But on some Labour screens the text breaks a bit on some special characters (like apostrophes and ampersands, not Ed Balls) and bleeds out of the area that was intended for it. That's not really un-engaging, but it just feels a bit shoddy.

Neither app really allows the user to take ownership of the news or policy at this level, which is sad. It would be great to be able to tell a friend about this particular policy area, or maybe open up some sort of discussion forum. Also, for a new visitor, there's no way to quickly see if you are a policy match to the parties, which the Green Party have done very well.

Do I feel valued by the Party?

I would love to know how many people have used the voter ID system in the Conservative app.

 
I made these screen shots on the way to Bristol last weekend, and the Labour app used my GPS location to give me the contact details of the local organiser. Instant win. There's quite a lot of win in this area on the Labour app actually.

The conservative approach throughout the app is very top-down, only allowing users to contribute funds and contact details, rather than getting involved themselves. It's a real shame to see mobile used in this way, essentially as a mini-website from 2006. You can see here the Labour app getting a bit confused between my postcode (Brixton) and my location at the time (Reading), but this is in principle a massive step in the right direction for how I feel political parties should be using the internet.

The Conservatives do make good use of some of the other technology available in the iPhone though. There's quite a fun 'swing-o-meter' which allows you to wiggle the phone to see how much of a swing to the right is needed to secure a Tory majority (about 7%). It's quite funny that it doesn't allow a tilt to the left, or allow the user to change priorities to Liberal Democrat, or in fact do anything other than dream about a  20% swing, but it's quite a nice toy to play with. It could also be quite a good argument for more proportional representation, but it's not been framed that way.

Is it possible for me to get more involved if I want to?

The Labour app makes it far easier for a prospective supporter to get more directly involved, with twitter links, local campaigners, events and news all shown right from the start, and the Conservative app does link out to facebook twitter and youtube. One of the Lib Dem app's major tab bar functions is to open an email with an itunes store link to forward.

But for me, the major fail is that neither app takes this any further. These apps should literally put supporting your party in the palm of your hands. 

Overall opinions 

If nothing else, these apps seem to me to be quite good indications of how each party thinks. On one hand you have an institutional, top-down approach. On the other, a locally-minded grassroots approach. It's funny and maybe a little bit worrying that the recently published manifestos seem to be completely the other way round at first glance. I don't think any app will particularly sway the election in any meaningful way, and it's sad that many of the features will be a little redundant after the election, especially for the Lib Dems and Tories.

2010 may very well be the first digital election, but I think it will be 2015 before politicians are really able to learn to use mobile in the way it should be used; to empower individuals to shape their own level of interaction with the cause, and give and receive real political value from direct, local engagement.

Challenges ahead

Working on MyMP has been a really interesting experience for me. Not just because it's been a real opportunity to re-evaluate how MPs communicate with their constituents, but also in terms of my own development: It's a project that completely plays to my own interests of using design thinking to further develop communities, and it's been a chance to learn a lot about a medium that was completely new to me and many other people at PublicZone. Everyone's a winner.

But speaking to Members, and their staff, and people who work in Parliamentary communications, I still feel very aware of how new I am to everything. On one hand, I'm a bit embarrassed to be completely baffled when people tell me how 'we need to make sure people know the difference between parliament and government' or 'this kind of communication can't come from that budget', and I'm starting to understand all that stuff. Especially in the light of the ongoing expenses mess.

But in some ways, I don't want to lose my initial confusion. We were able to scope and architect MyMP off the back of the way we thought that the public would want to connect with their representatives, not the other way around. Once you start to think in that way, it becomes a lot simpler to do some quite interesting things with the kind of content you're displaying, and with the way you're displaying it. All it needs is a little trust on all sides that ultimately everyone's trying to do the same thing.

When we launched today in Parliament, I became more sure of that.

I just hope that we can capitalise on the great press we've been getting recently and make this a service that all MPs will be able to use.

 

Designing mobile democracy

I've been meaning to write more about the iPhone app I've been working on whilst here at PublicZone.

Well, it went live a few weeks ago (http://tinyurl.com/mymp-app), and we're officially launching it in Parliament in just over a week, so I thought now would be a good time to talk through some of the thinking behind it. It's an app called MyMP, a way for constituents to contact and keep up-to-date with their MP whilst on-the-move.

Before we got to the visual design stage, we spent a lot of time profiling the different potential users of the app; what they would want to do, where they would be, and how they would make their way to and through the app.

It became obvious fairly early on, as it should with most mobile apps, that MyMP should not just be a representation of the MPs regular website in mini form. There were certain key things that we found lots of our profiles needing to do in common, which were all tied to being in a specific location or at a 'point of annoyance' i.e at the point where usually you'd humph "I'm going to write a letter". So version one of the app is mainly designed around that.

 

You'll also notice the 'Discussions / Derek wants your view' section (Derek Wyatt MP has been working with us for this pilot version of the app) - this was partly a requirement of Derek's and also an ambition of ours to open up the weekly business of the House, by allowing MPs to post short summaries and comments of topical issues, and allow constituents to vote and add their own comments. Users can also chose to 'watch' certain discussions and put them at the top of their lists of discussions.

 

The main complaint we're getting in the app store reviews we have, is that the app only currently works for one MP. But we've built in a clever little mechanism that works with the TheyWorkForYou postcode finder, to find someone's actual constituency MP, and serve up their email so that anyone in the UK can still use this app to contact their MP in the first instance. 

We all felt this was really important, because although we hope that all MPs will be able to use the app in future, we knew that for the time being there would be a lot of people who didn't live in the Sittingbourne and Sheppey constituency. We wanted them to at least get some use from the app.

The one minor mistake I feel we made in the planning stage was to underestimate the power of local mapping. MyMP was never going to be a political campaigning tool, it was always set up to be a "what are you doing / what are you going to do about X" tool, so local mapping makes perfect sense. For me, our 'In My Area' section is the greatest sucess of the app, and I hope we can develop it more in version 2.

By the way, these are preview screen shots and there are some discrepancies between them and the finished version. I hope I found the visual balance I talked about in a previous post. The idea with the red bits, obviously, is that they'd change depending on the political background of the MP using the app. 

You should download it yourself! The app store link is http://tinyurl.com/mymp-app

I'm really pleased to have worked on this project, it may actually be the first mobile application released by a sitting politician, which would be cool. The only challenge for us now is to make it sustainable and expandable - in the light of the expenses row and the subsequent (stupid!) withdrawal of members' communications allowances, it will be hard and inefficient to roll this out one MP at a time. I really hope we can find a solution that will allow the app to reach its full potential in future.

Find out more about the MyMP app for Derek Wyatt from the iTunes store

What does democracy look like?

I'm working on a political brief at the moment, it's quite exciting. It's an iPhone app for an MP, launching just after Christmas.

Looking at other other democratic engagement sites, here's a fantastic variety of effort - from templated blogs to fully bespoke campaigns. Often the most effective examples aren't from the bespoke end.

And the BBC has just launched Democracy Live, at the same time that I was checking out PopVox from the Parliament website. 

In many ways, the two sites have very similar aims - to enable the wider public to greater understand and connect with the work of Parliament - but their approach is completely different. PopVox, a school's resource page targeted directly at young people, relies on long streams of copy and a few (very nice) illustrations to get its traditional message across. Democracy Live uses live video of Parliamentary business through the iPlayer platform, and has links to lots of other political stats and information. 

I'm not sure if the sites aren't working for me because of their design and content, or because politics is just quite boring: It's very rarely about culture change, empowerment and getting things done - it's more often about partisanship, process and scandal. And unless you're in the business already, or a journalist, you're probably not that bothered with those things. 

So visually I'm presented with a bit of a dilemma for my app. Functionally, we're really pleased with what our first release will enable constituents to do. I think it's going to be really special. 

But do I go for a glossy, web 2.0 mess that completely mis-represents the day-to-day reality of Parliamentary life, or do I go for a stuffy but learned aesthetic that hopes that the issues of the day will provide the excitement and engagement? 

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle - but I'm becoming fascinated by the relationship between political activity and its visual representation, between the perceptions of value, integrity, and efficacy.

Glum Councillors

I Stumbled on this amazing website earlier thanks to a link from @mattx. Called 'Glum Councillors', the tumblr collects and examines images of local representatives inspecting the many ailments of their local areas.

It's a definite 'funny because it's true' site for people who have worked or taken an interest in local politics. 

In some ways, I don't have a problem with images like this as they serve the purpose that's set for them; to prove that these campaigners are out and about and aware of local images. 

It's just a shame that these pictures can so often be worthy of coverage by Glum Councillors.