The CUTGroup Book is here: download the book for free or pre-order a copy at Amazon.
The CUTGroup is a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test civic apps. The premise is simple:
Overview
The CUTGroup is a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test civic apps. The premise is simple:
- Fill out a CUTGroup profile and sign up to be a tester of civic apps, and we’ll send you a $5 VISA gift card
- If and when you are chosen to test a civic app, you get paid a $20 VISA gift card
As we noted in our launch blog post, we see this as our flagship program to establish sustained, meaningful collaboration with residents around data and technology.
CUTGroup is a lightweight way to get people involved. The hope is once everyone is involved in this world, we’ll find new ways to innovate that we can’t possibly conceive at this time.
We have over 800 Chicago residents signed up for this program, from all over the city– all 50 wards, all 77 community areas. Our tests have been super-rewarding exercises that have given us huge insight on making tools that work for people. As of today, we have conducted 9 tests:
#2 – Go2School User Application Test
We have learned a lot about our own projects, gained invaluable insight in what people are interested in when visiting any Web site and their relationship with data on the web. We share these results so everyone can access the information and implement this knowledge to other civic apps. We are also continuing to learn more about the testing process, and refining our test designs.
HowTo
We’ve had a lot of attention on the CUTGroup and lots of great organizations have expressed an interest in starting similar programs in their cities. We are devoted to documenting our work here so that it can be as broadly useful as possible.
As part of this project, we’ve developed software and processes that allow us to manage such a large group of people testing a wide variety of hardware and software across the city. The main tool is Patterns, which allows us to segment our participants by lots of criteria (location, device, Internet connection, etc.):
Patterns uses data that we gather from other Web-based systems like MailChimp (for outbound email notifying CUTGroup members about testing opportunities) and Wufoo (for managing metadata about testers and their availability). Each of these systems have very strong APIs that allow us to move data in and out of Patterns. It makes operating the CUTGroup a breeze. We use Ohours to manage timeslots. This kind of lightweight approach is at the heart of our philosophy here at Smart Chicago.
We also documented everything we learned about the gift cards we use in the CUTGroup here.
Press
Finding “real people” to test civic technology
On their way out of the library at 8 p.m., O’Neil asked Kompare what he thought of the test. “A home run,” Kompare replied. “The woman I was working with. Faaantastic. She gave me at least three (improvements) that are doable.” Kompare said the app suggested the woman’s son take the Cermak bus to school, but she told Kompare that wasn’t an option because that route crossed through unsafe gang territory.
Civic Hackers Want You: Group Offers Cash for App Testing
But Daniel X. O’Neil, co-founder of EveryBlock and executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, says the current relationship between government agencies and coders is incomplete.
“[D]ozens of developers looking at each other in conference rooms over pizza is never going to lead to making lives better in Chicago without the active involvement of real residents expressing real needs and advocating for software that makes sense to them,” O’Neil wrote on his blog last month.
That’s why Smart Chicago is launching a “Civic User Testing Group,” to involve citizens from all over the city in testing, and eventually conceptualizing, new apps and tools. Participants will become the beta testers for developers looking for feedback on their latest work. Testers will both submit feedback through the group’s site and be a part of “mildly scientific” focus groups through the city, O’Neil says.
Media
Direct media inquiries to Dan O’Neil, (773) 960-6045, [email protected].
Team
Chris Gansen is the lead developer for this project. He created all processes for signup, segmentation, and management of users. He conceived of and created our Patterns software and is the overall technical human associated with the CUTGroup.
Julie Harpring is a User Experience Architect from Orbitz who volunteered to create and run our first user test as well as much of our supporting documentation.
We’ve also had the benefit of advice from Jason Kunesh of Public Good Software and Adam Steele of DePaul University. Former Smart Chicago contractor Emily Escarra was a main early tester on the project and also analyzed and wrote up some results. We are grateful!
Here’s all of the blog posts we’ve published about this project: