Smart Chicago was happy to march in the Bud Billiken Parade along with the Gray Era Brass, Youth-Led Tech instructors and participants, and other community member. Here’s pics:
We also helped them manage their first mass texting campaign during the parade. More to come on that!
Note: this is a guest post by Rose Afriyie of our partner mRelief.
How do you keep your finger on the pulse of user needs? At mRelief.com, a startup with non-traditional users — beneficiaries of public assistance — this is a question that we constantly ask ourselves. We are helping our users solve for long wait times by providing them an avenue to help them assess their eligibility for public assistance through text messaging conversations and online questionnaires that help them gauge whether it is worth it to complete extensive applications. These forms return response pages and text messages that help them determine their eligibility and local resources through a partnership that we have with Purple Binder.
Our users don’t have a lot of economic power in society. An average online mRelief user is paid $1,321 a month and those who text in to determine their eligibility make $150 less in earned income. When you have decreased purchasing power, technology is seldom built with your needs in mind. But in interviews and surveys, our users have shared that they are humbled by our willingness to learn how we can better serve them and provide relief to the process of asking for government help.
Since we launched in September last year in Chicago, we had to commit to some listening strategies— activities we engaged in to hear our users and meet them where they are. Considering that we had 134 percent online user growth between May and June and that between June and July we almost tripled the number of text messages processed by our system, we think we are on to something. We would love to share one key listening strategy that contributed to getting us to this point: The CUTGroup.
Landing Page Before CUTGroup:
Landing Page After CUTGroup:
Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup)
Since we launched mRelief, we conduct quarterly user surveys to get a sense of what makes our users tick. In 4th quarter of last year, the revelation was 82 percent of respondents didn’t pay for SMS which gave us the affirmation needed to launch our SMS strategy in November 2014.
But the most in-depth survey by far has been the CUTGroup test we participated in during Q1 of this year, an initiative from Smart Chicago to to help developers listen to the needs of their users. It combines observational analysis with insightful questions through surveys.
CUTGroup insights on our website usability combined with Google Analytics data on form completion and bounce rate were catalysts for redesigning our entire site with key leads on what should be areas of focus. Especially helpful was the notion that our icons on our pre-CUTGroup landing page were not clearly understood by 4 out of 6 of the users who mentioned our icons.
Other features that were the result of usability feedback led to rethinking our calculator by positioning a link to it near income questions and making all popovers/help text pop out as soon as a user enters data into a field. Based on typos, resulting from auto-correct and human error, we also revamped our SMS experience with more notices and additions that left users feeling like they weren’t penalized for mistakes. We helped users who texted in stay on the same text message if they made an error– all made possible through observational analysis in the CUTGroup.
Golden Nuggets for Future Consideration
I live 8 minutes from the Martin Luther King Community Service Center where we launched our first pilot involving case workers who served as navigators for our tools. There are times, on my way to work, that I will stop in and just wait with the folks we serve. I will listen. Observe folks — the phones they use, the questions asked about eligibility and surmise what the growing pain points are. For many startup co-founders, in-person surveys are time-intensive and are an “and” strategy combined with other world wide web magic. So, I also want to share two dope insights that we hope to integrate into listening strategies for the future:
So chime in, folks, tell us how are you listening?
See how we have integrated learnings into our site at www.mrelief.com
mRelief is also currently looking to pair with folks who have expertise in Angular JS. E-mail us at mrelief.form@gmail.com if you are interested in supporting tools that modernize public benefits for all.
“Youth-led Tech | Summer 2015” is a technology mentoring program in five Chicago neighborhoods: Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland. As part of this program, we’re teaching various classes on digital skills. We’ve open sourced our curriculum through a series of blog posts.
This is the PDF version of the first nine days of our course, where we cover an introductions to WordPress, WordPress dashboards, themes, how to post, and how to add media to your WordPress site. We also have set time aside each day for students to work on their typing skills.
These are minute-by-minute guides on teaching the youth. If you want to start your own Youth-Led Tech program, this is the place to start. At Smart Chicago, we are dedicated to sharing all of our methods. Not just code published to Github (though we do that, too), but whole swaths of templates, resources, and guides that help spread the practice of community technology.
We’ve also broken down each day’s curriculum on Slideshare as well. Here’s the list below:
We’ll be posting more of our curriculum as we get it packaged up.
“Youth-led Tech | Summer 2015” was a technology mentoring program in five Chicago neighborhoods: Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland.
Here’s a closer look at the program in each of our locations:
The bulk of this program was delivered in a first-floor classroom at Christ The King Jesuit College Preparatory School, 5088 W. Jackson Blvd Chicago IL 60644. The last week of the program held at Neighborhood Empowerments for a Better Communities (NEBC), 4628 W. Washington Blvd.Chicago, IL 60644. Here’s a look at this digital skills learning environment.
We used the cafeteria of Association House of Chicago 1116 N. Kedzie Ave. Chicago IL 60651 for this program. Here’s pictures and some detailed descriptions.
We used a portion of the second floor of Teamwork Englewood, 815 W. 63rd St. #2, Chicago IL 60621 for this neighborhood program. Here’s a closer look at the space.
We used a basement office in Chicago Youth Centers ABC Polk Bros. 3415 W. 13th Pl. Chicago IL 60623 to deliver this program. Here’s pictures of the space, along with the outdoor area and basketball court.
We used a portion of the Dr. Elzie Young Community Center, 9400 S. Perry Ave. Chicago IL 60620 for our program in this neighborhood. Here’s images and a description.
Note: this is part of a series of posts in our Connect Chicago program where we describe in detail digital skills learning environments throughout the city.
The 2015 Youth-Led Tech program was delivered in a second-floor space of Teamwork Englewood, which was formed in 2003 as part of the New Communities Program, sponsored by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the MacArthur Foundation. Its goal is to unite the many organizations serving Englewood residents and work toward the common goal of building a stronger community.
The room was spacious, with ample tables and chairs to accommodate the youth and their computers.
We had a whiteboard:
And we were able to bring in a projector to do group work:
Plenty of room to spread out for projects:
Outdoor space for breaks:
Here’s a full set of photos:
Note: this is part of a series of posts in our Connect Chicago program where we describe in detail digital skills learning environments throughout the city.
Christ The King Jesuit College Preparatory School at 5088 W. Jackson Blvd Chicago IL 60644 is a Catholic Jesuit secondary school using the Cristo Rey model to serve young men and women from the Austin neighborhood and surrounding communities of Chicago’s West Side.
The building, opened in 2010, is impressive— full of light, well laid-out, and in pristine condition.
Sessions are held in room 105, right at the entrance. It’s named after Steven Biko:
The classroom is equipped with a projector and laptop, great desks, and whiteboards. 
Each of the youth has their own laptop, provided by Smart Chicago through funds from Get IN Chicago.
There’s a great enclosed, outdoor space for busting out.
A great cafeteria space and a gymnasium, all on the same floor. 
Christ the King was a great location for Youth-Led Tech in Austin. Bonus: here’s a video I made of my recent visit:
Note: this is part of a series of posts in our Connect Chicago program where we describe in detail digital skills learning environments throughout the city.
We conducted our Youth-Led Tech 2015 program in a portion of this community center in the Roseland neighborhood. The space was large, cool, and well-configured for group learning.
The youth were able to make the space their own:
And the parking lot was good for breaks:
See a complete set of photos here: