Austin User Research Blog Post Last week, my colleague Pete Fecteau, Prototype Engineer, and I had the

pleasure of traveling to Austin, TX to conduct in-person user research for Granicus CivicIdeas application. Over a 4-day period, we met with more than 30 users of the CivicIdeas application. Our days were packed with talking and eating fortunately, we were in one of the best cities for restaurants (says this native Texan who misses queso on a daily basis). We conducted three focus groups and met with more than a dozen people for one-on-one interviews. Participants included Austin residents in their early-20s to early 70s and from a diverse range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Most of the people we met with were pretty active in their community and many were involved with local committees and groups anything from neighborhood associations to bike coalitions to city staff. We heard a lot of really interesting thoughts around citizen engagement, above and beyond how CivicIdeas supports that. Participants said they appreciated that the CivicIdeas tool (SpeakUpAustin or CapMetroIdeas) is an easy, convenient way to reach their government its a huge step towards eGovernance said one user. While we gathered some specific ideas around improving the site, the overarching theme we heard was that there are so many platforms for government to citizen interaction that it can be overwhelming and confusing do I email my council member directly or respond to a Facebook update? Plus, community organizations also have their own online communities, creating yet another means for organizing citizens. Through all of these channels weve become accustomed to interacting on our own terms and have come to expect real-time feedback. Social media and community-centric forums provide great value for residents they keep people involved and informed. But how can organizations create a broader dialogue online and collect feedback on larger scale projects? Do social media and emails create productive spaces for government to citizen collaboration? This is where government crowdsourcing platforms, like CivicIdeas, can help. These tools allow you to go beyond passive interaction to active collaboration. Check out how Capital Metro created a conversation with users on their 2013 service changes residents responded to one another and the organization was able to jump in and contribute to the conversation. It was great to get out there and talk to our users in person. These types of interactions are invaluable - the success and viability of our products depends on this. We had made a lot of assumptions about the application and what should be improved, but hearing from users directly really reinforced our hunches and will ultimately help drive user adoption and retention. I look forward to the opportunity to meet with more users!