The Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) is a package of resources and activities that enable groups of people anywhere to organize, build trust, and collaboratively create solutions for problems impacting their community. The toolkit provides a dynamic framework that integrates knowledge and action to solve challenges. Designed to harness the benefits of group action and the power of open sharing, the activities draw on each participant’s strengths and perspectives as the group works to accomplish a common goal.
The toolkit emerged from frog’s collaboration with Nike Foundation/Girl Effect on a project where we explored the nature and value of connections for adolescent girls living in extreme poverty in the developing world. Pairing design research and skills development, frog worked with girls around the world to examine their communities and collectively devise solutions for the problems they faced. Inspired by the Girl Effect project, frog went on to create the Collective Action Toolkit to empower groups of change-makers everywhere.
The CAT isn’t a rigid template for problem solving. It’s designed to be flexible and accessible, with an action map and activities arranged into six categories, from building a group, to imagining new ideas, to planning change. The toolkit challenges groups to move beyond discussion to action, continually clarifying their shared goals based on what they learn through the problem-solving process. The result is a holistic approach to help groups tackle issues in their communities.
Collective Action Toolkit
Our perception of the world is primarily visual. In fact, according to the article “Seeing Clearly: The Story of the Human Eye,” by Bradford G. Schleifer, we receive 80 percent of the information that enters our brain through our eyes. Thus, it is no surprise that visual communication lets people perceive concepts and ideas most easily.
When we present personas, sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, and other design deliverables to our clients and stakeholders, it is our duty and responsibility to create well-designed deliverables.
Expressing UX Concepts Visually
We form first impressions of the people and things we encounter in our daily lives in an extraordinarily short timeframe. We know the first impression a website’s design creates is crucial in capturing users’ interest. In less than 50 milliseconds, users build an initial “gut feeling” that helps them decide whether they’ll stay or leave. This first impression depends on many factors: structure, colors, spacing, symmetry, amount of text, fonts, and more.
In our study we investigated how users’ first impressions of websites are influenced by two design factors:
- Visual complexity — how complex the visual design of a website looks
- Prototypicality — how representative a design looks for a certain category of websites
Users Love Simple & Familiar Designs – Why Websites Need to Make a Great First Impression
More often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the desktop version is complete.
Here are three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead:
- Mobile is exploding
- Mobile forces you to focus
- Mobile extends your capabilities
Dieter Rams is best-known for his work at Braun–where he revolutionized the design of electronics–and his indelible influence on Apple’s Jony Ive. But he has had a decisive hand in another, much smaller company: Vitsœ, a British manufacturer that has been producing Rams’s modular shelving system for 50 years. To mark his 80th birthday, the German master has allowed Vitsœ to release the transcript of the speech he delivered in New York in 1976, in which he articulates his ethos of user-centered design and some of his famous 10 commandments. In 2012, they feel as if they were written yesterday.
Dieter Rams On Good Design As A Key Business Advantage
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Hello readers, I am currently looking for a new opportunity and if you have one or are aware of one, I would appreciate your letting me know by emailing me at hello@conetrees.com
In summary, I have 6 and a half years of experience in client interaction, planning, leading, managing and executing projects working through user research, data synthesis and ideation, information architecture, interaction design and usability testing.
Some clients I have recently worked for, many of which we got repeat work from for great project execution and client satisfaction at PebbleRoad, Singapore are (with digital agencies as partners and otherwise) include Standard Chartered, VISA, DHL, Guinness, Singtel and government agencies of Singapore.
Some accomplishments that may be worth highlighting are:
- I am a contributing author to the book, UX StoryTellers- Connecting the Dots.
- I have designed and run The UX Bookmark (uxbookmark.com) and Cone Trees (conetres.com). They are featured in popular UX aggregators, acute search engines and design galleries like All Top user interface section, UX URLs and UX Pond.
- I presented expert tutorial titled ‘Usability Testing in India’ at the India HCI/ IDID 2010 conference at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai n March 2010.
- Some of my usability testing and interaction design articles featured in BCSCHI’s Usability News and published in Evolt. My usability Testing presentation featured on the front page of SlideShare.
- I was a member of the Executive of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Special Interest Group 13.1 on Interaction Design & International Development (IDID)
- My user interface widget libraries (clear input and gestures) featured on the Axure RP website and Wireframes magazine.
Have a great day.
Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development.
Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development, but process improvement and customer service strategies. The method used by IDEO was documented by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer (of International Institute of Management Development (IMD) business school), who latterly further enhanced the process and sold the rights to Deloitte Consulting in 2006.
What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?
Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives the author a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only does he have a good idea of what the other discipline does, he is also a practitioner of the other discipline.
However, in attempting to play both roles at once, he often finds that client companies keep these two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.
Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers
Sketchnote Army is dedicated to finding and showcasing sketchnotes and sketchnoters from around the world- from events, conferences, workshops or wherever sketchnotes are captured or created. If you want your sketchnotes to be featured there, you can send your sketchnotes URL and info to the webmaster.
Sketchnote Army
‘People & participation’ is based on Involve’s successful book by the same name which was launched in 2005. The book provides a useful summary of participatory methods and practice but given the number of methods and speed of the development of new methods, it is impossible for a printed publication to stay accurate for long.
The reason for transferring ‘People & participation’ to the web is to allow the creators to maintain more, and more up to date information about participation. It also allows use the site user to add their knowledge and experience making the site a truly collaborative experience, something that a book simply cannot do.
People & participation
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