#c4c

[sebtember5]

Smick💙🥰

[nilobunny]

July’s Coffee4Cosplay: My Hero Academia Heroes! Froppy wins! Thank you to all of my supporters who made this art piece possible~! <3 please support me on patreon, and vote for the next cosplay theme and more~! www.patreon.com/niloxylo Follow me on twitter and furaffinity! https://twitter.com/HamsterOfTime http://www.furaffinity.net/user/hamsteroftime/

[m3tth4ws]

[nicki0kaye]

As far as I managed to get on my 2020 c4c comic pitch. You can see the concepts for the characters over on this post. ...man I wish things had gone differently. I really love these pages. I worked so hard on them. Unfortunately, I over-worked myself and still didn’t meet the deadline. and all I got was a lousy case of tendonitis that needed to be corrected with surgery

[heres-to-all-that-is-mine]

Denver <3

[ashkeromy]

Voice not clear😕 . . . . #Holidays #adventure . . . . . . . #l4l #c4c #likeforlike #likeall #like4like #likes4likes #liking #instagood #tagblender #follow #followme #followback #followforfollow #follow4follow #followers #followher #follower #followhim #followbackteam #followall #comment #comments #commentback #comment4comment #commentbelow #shoutout #shoutouts #shoutoutback . . . .. @harsh_mhd_ @karikku_fresh @my_kozhikode (at Pulikkayam) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0oIu9IHDyY/?igshid=1lfvvsc318att

[c4c-travel]

Accessibility is a key consideration when reimagining the government travel experience. With a more typical technical engagement, we may only be thinking about web accessibility. But like virtually all government services, we have to consider physical spaces as well. Not to mention, it's TRAVEL, so physical access is fundamental!

What are the ways we can ensure equal access and opportunities for all travelers, travel approvers, and travel and financial support staff? Travel services often broker and coordinate services between external providers. How might we ensure we are serving all Canadians in identifying and ensuring accessible options?

As with the implementation of the Accessible Canada Act itself, we'll be working with, not for Canadians with disabilities to create a more inclusive service.

- Andrea, ux design fellow

[nilobunny]

August’s Coffee4Cosplay: Kill La Kill! Satsuki wins! Thank you to all of my supporters who made this art piece possible~! <3 please support me on patreon, and vote for the next cosplay theme and more~! www.patreon.com/niloxylo Follow me on twitter and furaffinity! https://twitter.com/HamsterOfTime http://www.furaffinity.net/user/hamsteroftime/

[nicki0kaye]

ey, if it isn’t the project that broke my goddang hand. I worked so dang hard on this comic pitch and not only did I not meet the deadline, but I gave myself a chronic pain condition! Always do your hand stretches, kids!  Anyway, here’s the cast line-up. We got the orc with a heart of gold, her obsessive vampiric ex, a cyborg cat milf and her doe medic/hacker gf, a selkie, a rock gremlin, a tiny robot boy in the selkie’s jacket, and two faceless baddies who will definitely survive the smol 5 page mini-arc

[heres-to-all-that-is-mine]

Also Denny of course

[maddy-c4c]

Working Norms: Sprint Planning

Our working style also incorporates agile sprint planning.

The first two weeks

We spent the first two weeks with our partners getting oriented, and doing free-form discovery; talking with folks, reading documents, reviewing previous research, trying to understand the problem space and organizational context, and getting situated.

We didn’t plan formal sprints; instead we created one Trello board for each week and added tasks as they emerged.

Halfway through this time, I learned about Sprint 0 from Cohort 2 #CodeForCanada PM fellow Siobhan.

Have you had any luck with Sprint 0? Is it useful?

Instead of Sprint 0, we used Sprint 1 to learn how to sprint as a team. We filled and prioritized the backlog, planned the sprint, updated and provided visibility throughout, and reviewed the sprint and did a retrospective together, continuously checking in with one another.

Although we did include substantial tasks, we were kind to ourselves if things were left incomplete.

Sprint planning schedule

Since then, we’ve been on a bi-weekly sprint schedule. The sprint schedule goes as follows:

[Ongoing] Gather activities for the backlog

[Sprint Day 1 - Monday] Sprint planning meeting

[Daily] Standup at 9:45am

[Sprint Day 10 - Friday] Sprint retro

How do you organize your sprint planning meeting, daily standup, and sprint retro meeting? When do you schedule them? What format works best for your team?

Sprint planning tools

We use Trello to build the backlog and tee-up the sprint tasks. This has a simple and straightforward Kanban format – backlog, todo, doing, done.

We tried a couple other Kanban mediums – colourful sticky notes & sharpies and writing on a whiteboard.

Although these are great for in-office visibility, ultimately Trello is our source-of-truth because it enables remote work and is accessible on mobile.

What tools or software do you use for sprint planning and tracking?

Maintaining and prioritizing the backlog

Since we’re still in discovery, our backlog tasks have been exploratory and high-level. For example, “map the policy landscape” or “build a framework to prioritize problems”.

I often refer to these as “choose-your-own-adventure” activities. In almost all cases, the person who proposed the activity was accountable for ensuring it got done. They had the best idea of how to approach the activity – whether it was individual research, a sticky-note workshop with the team, or setting up stakeholder interviews. But the approach became more visible as new information was uncovered.

Because these were mostly led by individuals, there hasn’t been much backlog maintenance or prioritization thus far.

At the beginning of a project, how do you balance your team’s excitement for individual initiatives and investigation, and prioritizing a backlog?

Looking forward

Change is inevitable. As our project progresses, we’ll reassess what works and what doesn’t, and adapt from there.

As we move into experimentation, our activities will become more concrete in scope and tasks. Our tasks will likely have to be estimated and the backlog groomed; priorities clearly communicated to ensure the team is aligned and moving in the same direction.

[foodeyworld]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝔽𝕠𝕠𝕕𝕖𝕪𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕝𝕕 (@foodeyworld)

Foods made me happy always :) #comment #comment4comment #photography #instapic #c4c #commenter #comments #commenting #captionplus #love #instagood #commentteam #commentback #commentbelow #photooftheday #commentalways #pleasecomment #goodmorning #foodporn https://www.instagram.com/p/CPcLf_SBMTR/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nilobunny]

October’s Coffee4Cosplay: Halloween Edition! Yami Yugi wins! Thank you to all of my supporters who made this art piece possible~! <3 please support me on patreon, and vote for the next cosplay theme and more~! www.patreon.com/niloxylo Follow me on twitter and furaffinity! https://twitter.com/HamsterOfTime http://www.furaffinity.net/user/hamsteroftime/

[nyctherapisttobe]

Did I just walk into a time machine? #timemachine #drwho #comment #comment4comment #c4c #commenter #comments #commenting #love #comments4comments #instagood #commentteam #commentback #commentbackteam #commentbelow #photooftheday #commentall #commentalways #pleasecomment (at Manhattan, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9RBQ5HhEsN/?igshid=i99v2hmodfik

[c4c-phac]

Reflections on the week of August 2 - August 9, 2019: Planning for a diversity of voices in User Research

What did we do last week? Mostly sent email. Emails, emails, emails. Basically this was me:

Ok, wait. Not interesting? Let’s talk instead about the purpose of these emails: planning and coordinating our UX Research. And more specifically, on ensuring that we are able to hear from a diverse and representative group of users as we move forward.

User Experience Research is about understanding and placing your users at the centre of design. It’s about listening (and then designing!) with empathy, making sure that you’re building a product that is relevant and really meets their underlying needs. It’s about making something delightful that excites them or, perhaps, maybe making their experience so seamless that they don’t even really think about the design at all.

But the thing is that, unless you’re marketing your product to a very specific segment of people, user needs can vary greatly. And unfortunately, our biases - and, let’s be real, systemic marginalization - mean that we often miss surfacing the needs of certain user populations. 

We’ve all heard by now about how office air conditioners are often set for the metabolic needs of men, leaving workers of other genders wearing blankets at their desk during summer (I am wearing one right now!) and, with more serious (and less fashionable) consequences, crash test dummies are based on men’s average weight and proportions, leaving others more vulnerable during an accident. There’s also the story of the soap dispenser that didn’t register the hands of black users. Yikes.

This is what happens when your research and testing does not take into account the varying needs of users. And when we’re talking about government services, accessibility and usability across a broad range of geographies and demographics is key - at the risk of perpetuating or exacerbating the exclusion of certain communities.  

Of course, empathy has limits, and the best way to ensure that design is inclusive is to have a diverse and representative design team. But in the absence of that possibility, the next best thing is to make sure that diverse voices are heard, that their needs are taken into consideration, and that products be built with them and not for them.

Ensuring that you have a diverse, representative sample of users for research is essential, and it may require extra time, resources, and consideration dedicated to planning. This is what we spent much of last week doing.

In our context, we’re lucky that our product has a fairly well-defined group of users; rather than designing for the Canadian public at large, as many government services target, our product is for organizations who are seeking PHAC funding. But right now, most of the funded organizations PHAC works with are based in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. 

It should be fairly straightforward, both logistically and content-wise, to talk to urban-based organizations to understand what they’d like to see from an updated application process. But what about organizations outside of major urban Canadian centres? Who can we talk to from up North, from Atlantic Canada, from Francophone Canada, from rural communities, from Indigenous communities? How might their needs differ? How can we not only make the process better for current applicants, but actually encourage a broader range of applicants to apply?

The designer on our team, Rosemarie, encouraged us to think about “Extremes and Mainstreams” in our user research recruitment. In other words, how can we make sure we include the voices of users who experience significant barriers to the current process? Like, maybe poor Internet access or digital literacy levels. According to the Extremes and Mainstreams methodology, “an idea that suits an extreme user will nearly certainly work for the majority of others. And without understanding what people on the far reaches of your solution need, you’ll never arrive at solutions that can work for everyone.”

So last week, we dedicated a lot of time and energy to identify organizations across geographies and demographics to help us answer these questions. We also spent some time learning from other government departments - Natural  Resources Canada, for example - who already work closely with Indigenous communities on grants and contributions programs to help us anticipate the issues that may arise and make sure we get the most out of our conversations with these users.

We know it’s worth the effort to ensure that new government services are informed by the experiences of more than just easy-to-access organizations in major Canadian cities. We can’t wait to share with you the findings of our research across diverse and representative user groups!

- Glennys Egan, Product Manager

[heres-to-all-that-is-mine]

Would you shake their hand be honest