Future Bristol is an online environmental awareness and academic research project which aims to engage citizens in a discussion about Bristol’s potential future as a low carbon city.

The project, which runs from the website http://futurebristol.co.uk/, launched on 28 February and presents two potential futures for people to choose from, and provides information about the various options as a way to educate and enlighten Bristolians about the possible outcomes of their choices.

The two scenarios are the result of research carried out which asked local influencers, ‘what would you like Bristol to look like in 2050 if it was a low carbon city, and how do we make it happen?’

Within each scenario on the site, visitors click on different options to vote on which they would or would not like to see in the Bristol of 2050.

Future Bristol uses Dialogue App

Linked from the site is the Future Bristol Dialogue App instance, which features the same branding as the main site. Visitors access the Dialogue App via a ‘Your Ideas’ link in the main menu of the website, and from the ‘Have Your Say’ link within the various options in each scenario.

Future Bristol uses a free version of Dialogue App. As our global headquarters is in Bristol, we chose to sponsor the project, and provided free skinning of the Dialogue App so that the branding would tie into the main site (this would not normally be possible with a free Dialogue App).

Dialogue App allows Future Bristol’s visitors to add new ideas to the discussion, and comment on and rate others’ ideas, such as this one:

Future Bristol uses social media to promote their site

The project is being run by Dr Rose Bailey, who had great success using Dialogue App for her Bristol Green Capital project. Dr Bailey is a gifted researcher and has a solid understanding of how to engage the public in her work. For Future Bristol, she is using Twitter and Facebook to publicise the project and motivate people, not just to get involved but also to make ‘green’ changes in their own lives.

This light touch approach gently encourages people to get involved, and the tone of Dr Bailey’s writing is friendly and accessible.

Visitors can share the site on Facebook or Twitter by clicking on the sharing buttons throughout the site, and from within Dialogue App.

Free publicity

Future Bristol has been featured elsewhere online, including on The Ecologist Facebook page, The Institution of Environmental Sciences website, Bristol Culture and on the Smashing Awards Designs of the Week site.

Future Bristol are using illustrations from Andy Council, a well-known Bristol artist. This has worked to bring more people to the site as Andy’s fans visit the Future Bristol site to see his new, original work.

If you are using Dialogue App, you’ll know that straight out of the box, it comes in plain vanilla flavour. Nice, and relatively tasty, but if you are using Dialogue App on a paid subscription, with a few customisations to the design we can turn it into a ‘jazzy mint’ or an ‘off-the-wall cookies and cream’!

We’re not saying that vanilla is bad, it’s just a bit run-of-the-mill; the safe option that everyone is happy with but doesn’t really relate to the identity of their organisation or the theme of their project.  In this blog post I’ll show you how with a few tweaks here and there we can turn your Dialogue App into something that really reflects your brand.

Images

Let’s start with the background image.  We’ve always been a big fan of white; it’s clean and modern, and allows for the attention to be drawn elsewhere on the page.  But it’s also a blank canvas, and ready for you to take advantage of.  Some of our customers have chosen to remove some of the white and add their own ‘flavour’.  Take this example from the Nation Grid’s Powering Britain’s Future dialogue, which makes great use of a fantastic graphic illustration:

Headers

Then there’s the page header.  Ordinarily we’d replace the Dialogue App logo with your own, but why not go one step further and add other elements of your branding into it?  The City of Edmonton in Canada did just this with their Complete Streets Dialogue (notice the pyramid theme to the left):

Colours

Colour is heavily customisable throughout the app, and we can change the background colour of the page or tag cloud, or the colour of borders around the main content area or discussions boxes.  Take a look at this striking orange on Vattenfall’s Conversation Wales campaign:

Buttons

We can create new buttons for your Dialogue App that mimic your branding or the buttons on your main website.  The changes could be as simple as a using a different colour, or creating an entirely new design.  Here are some examples of buttons some of our customers are using:

Want more flavour?

If any of this interests you, then get in touch! Customisations such as those listed above are all included in the Dialogue App price, and your account manager will be happy to help with this.

If you’re looking for even more inspiration, take a look at this Dialogue App demo we created to show off some extreme skinning options.  For this example, we’ve added a big background image and played around with the transparency of the page itself, which introduces some interesting effects.  We’re not saying you should go this far, but it demonstrates the power of customisations.

Go on, add your own flavour!

Engaging with deaf citizens
There are around 10 million people in the UK with some form of hearing loss, which is about one in six of the population. Of these, 800,000 are severely or profoundly deaf. When communicating with those that are hard of hearing, Action on Hearing Loss recommends using both British Sign Language and subtitles and/or text to make the information as accessible as possible.

As Dialogue App allows for the embedding of videos, British Sign Language translations can appear throughout consultations.

International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD)
The ICSD are currently running a consultation aimed at engaging with those that are hard of hearing. They are using Dialogue App to consult with the public about changes in the governance of the organisation. The consultation spans twelve key themes and asks users to provide ideas and suggestions on any of the themes.

To make the consultation fully accessible to the hard of hearing, the overview and a description of each of the themes of the Dialogue are available in both text and British Sign Language.

Accessibility and Usability of Our Apps
Dialogue App has been tested by The Shaw Trust Web Accreditation Group. As our apps are web-based, font sizes and the colour contrast can be adjusted through the user’s web browser, operating system or device. Our apps are also W3C AA and WCAG 2.0 compliant and use Arial font by default, as recommended by Pesky People, a business start up that works to improve digital access and inclusion.

If you’ve got any view on online accessibility and usability, feel free to leave a comment.

Since then, Dialogue App has been used for a number of interesting engagement activities. Here are a handful of our favourites:

Cabinet Office
The UK Cabinet Office ran a Dialogue back in March in order to garner views on how users and re-users of open data should be engaged by the new Open Data User Group (ODUG), who were advising the Data Strategy Board (DSB) on the issue.

It’s now closed for new ideas but you can view the ideas from the Cabinet Office dialogue here. You can also follow the Open Data User Group on Twitter.

Volunteering England
Every year, non-profit organisation Volunteering England holds a Volunteers’ Week that celebrates the contributions of millions of volunteers by encouraging individuals and organisations to hold their own events. It used Dialogue App to stimulate debate on whether this was the right approach, specifically calling for ideas on what the objective of Volunteering Week 2013 should be and how it could be achieved.

Have a browse of the dialogue and post your own ideas here.

King County Library System
King County Library System (KCLS) is an overarching library system for 46 libraries in King County, Washington in the US. It wanted to engage with its community on possible future uses for the Cross Kirkland Corridor.

It’s a particularly fitting use of Dialogue App given that KCLS’s mission is to “provide free, open and equal access to ideas and information to all members of the community”, which can also be said about an online dialogue. It’s open for responses until August 31st 2012 and it can be viewed here.

Monmouthshire County Council
Monmouthshire County Council is set to review the community and electoral arrangements in Monmouthshire. Before this occurs, the council are using Dialogue App to consult on what should be published in a Terms of References document, which will be used as part of the review process.

You can participate in the dialogue until the 5th October 2012.

Intrigued? Have a play with our demo and sign-up for a limited version of Dialogue App for free.

Here are some projects where Dialogue App has been used for a budget consultation:

UK Government

Her Majesty’s Treasury used Dialogue App to run an effective online consultation on how savings could be made in order to cut its deficit, called the Spending Challenge. The first phase involved a consultation open only to those working in the public sector, which ran for two weeks.

Here’s a video of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, inviting the public sector to take part:

The debate then opened up to allow participation from members of the public, which was launched by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

Over 100,000 ideas were submitted through the site. Of these, 25 were taken forward to form part of the Budget. These included reducing the costs of in-house Government publications, reforming the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and minimising tax fraud, avoidance and evasion to raise an estimated £7 billion of extra tax revenue by 2014.

Overall, the ideas will help deliver more than £500 million of savings by the UK government.

For more information see its review on the HM Treasury website.

Warrington Borough Council

Warrington Borough Council used Dialogue App alongside Budget Simulator to crowdsource ideas to cut its deficit.  Budget Simulator allowed residents to understand the economic pressure the council was under and Dialogue App encouraged residents to discuss ways money could be saved.

To learn more about Warrington Borough Council’s consultation you can read the PDF case study or have a look at the live application.

If you’re interested in learning how Dialogue App could work for your department or council’s budget consultation, feel free to request a free, no obligation, guided demo or get in touch to find out more.

This free version of the Dialogue App is all part of our #GlobalDialogueProject aimed at helping not-for-profits run community dialogues better online.  To get going with your dialogue, all you need to do is click the button below (or here) and our Dialogue App will automatically set-up an online dialogue for you.  It’s as simple as that!

And if you haven’t heard about the #GlobalDialogueProject, then check out the project poster below or click here for a bit of background.  And of course do spread the word to any friends / colleagues you think would be interested in taking part . . .

However, there are a number of different ways that a dialogue can be set up and run. Here are three approaches that have worked for existing users of Dialogue App.

Deciding which will work best for you is simply a matter of identifying your goals and matching them to an approach

Single discussion running for a fixed period

Many of our clients run a dialogue in a similar way to their other public consultations. This means that the discussion generally runs for a fixed period (often 12 weeks) during which a single question or topic is open for public discussion, and at the end a report is published.

Before the dialogue opens, there’s usually a period of outreach (both online and offline). Often we provide our clients with a holding page at the address where the Dialogue App will run, and this can include a form for visitors to sign up to receive updates by email.

During the consultation period, members of the public can register to add their ideas and rate, tag and comment on other people’s ideas. Most organisations will arrange for moderators to be on-hand throughout the open period, to remove inappropriate content and settle contentious issues.

Some clients also provide facilitators or ‘dialogue catalysts’ to keep the conversation on track and promote discussion of the more interesting ideas.

This way of running a dialogue has worked for many different types of clients, as it fits into a consultation framework that’s already well understood. Examples include:

• hyper-local community councils, eg Henbury and Brentree’s BS10 Your Idea
• local authorities, e.g. Warrington Borough Council’s Online Budget Consultation
• central Government departments, like HM Treasury’s Spending Challenge

Multiple concurrent discussions for a fixed period

Sometimes it’s useful to pose two or more related questions at the same time, with a separate area of the Dialogue App for discussion of each issue. Running the questions concurrently means that all the discussions can be publicised, moderated and reviewed at the same time, reducing costs and concentrating public attention into one place at one time.

Clients who have used Dialogue App like this include:

• HM Government, whose Your Freedom Dialogue asked for ideas in three areas: restoring civil liberties, repealing unnecessary laws and cutting business and third sector regulations.
• The United States Department of Homeland Security’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, where they consulted the public abut six different topics including counterterrorism, border control and risk assessment.

Multiple discussions over an extended period

Some organisations choose to keep their Dialogue App online continuously rather than for a fixed period, creating new topics whenever an issue will benefit from dialogue and discussion.

These discussions may run for a few weeks or a few months, or they may be open indefinitely, with no fixed closing date.  Individual discussions may be launched with a lot of surrounding publicity, or no fanfare at all. Sometimes there might not be any open discussions on the site, but all the old discussions remain available, archived for the public to browse and refer to.

Speak Out Sutton from the London Borough of Sutton is an example of Dialogue App being used in this way. Discussions have ranged from libraries to waste collection to the Big Society.

We also like to use Dialogue App like this for our own internal discussions. We have our own Dialogue running continuously, and anyone in Delib is free to start a discussion. Whether we’re looking for ways to improve the user experience of one of our apps, or ideas for where to go for the company Christmas meal, we find Dialogue App a quick and easy way to crowdsource opinions.

We’ve helped clients with to run dialogues lasting from a few weeks to more than a year; from highly-publicised national consultations to local community discussions. 

If you’re interested in discussing how Dialogue App could work best for you, with Gillian Crea or Ben Fowkes | 0845 638 1848 (UK) +44 1173 812 989 (anywhere else).

A key aspect of designing for success is the approach to user roles in the app. Dialogue App provides for:

• Unregisted users
• Registered users
• Moderators
• Site admins

Here’s a quick guide to each of the different types of user in Dialogue App, their responsibilities, and how they interact with the system.

Unregistered users
It’s important that visitors become quickly engaged with the Dialogue, without having to register or log in.  Unregistered visitors to the site can:

• Browse all the user-submitted content on the site, including ideas, comments, ratings and tags
• Search the ideas using keywords or tags
• Read the background information about the topic under discussion
• Share ideas with their contacts on Facebook and Twitter

Registered users
Anyone can register for an account on a Dialogue App site. By registering, a user is able browse the site in the same way as an unregistered user, but they can also contribute their own content.  Registered users can:

• Submit ideas
• Comment on other people’s ideas
• Rate and tag ideas
• Edit their own user profile
• View the profiles of other registered users.
• Receive opt-in email updates from the dialogue organisers

We’re very aware that the registration process on many websites can be off-putting, so we’ve ensured that the registration form asks for the absolute minimal information: a username, a password and an email address (although this is configurable at the request of the client).

Moderators
It’s important for somebody to be in charge of moderating any public dialogue.  Moderators can interact with the dialogue in the same way as standard registered users, but they can also:

• Reject inappropriate or offensive ideas and comments. Rejected content is hidden from public view, but can be reinstated if required.
• Remove inappropriate, duplicate or irrelevant tags (either from single ideas or sitewide)
• Lock ideas to prevent further discussion. The idea and its comments will remain visible to the public, but no further comments, ratings or tags can be added.
• Upload a photo or badge to their personal profile.  This will appear next to any ideas or comments the post, to indicate their official status.

Dialogue App can send an email to moderators if an idea or comment has been reported by a member of the public, making it easier to find and remove inappropriate content.

Site admins
Site admins have the ability to set up the Dialogue App, manage its users, customise its appearance and view or download reports and statistics.  Site admins can:

• Perform all moderation actions as above
• Create, publish and close discussions on the site
• View top-line statistics about the dialogue (number of users, ideas, comments etc)
• Download all ideas, comments, user details and tags in CSV (spreadsheet) format
• Manage the demographic information that is collected from users upon registration, and when editing their personal profiles.
• Customise the appearance of their Dialogue by uploading a logo (if Delib has not provided a custom theme)
• Promote and demote other users between different roles, and delete users
• Edit the background information about the dialogue, the privacy policy, and other text on the site

If you have any questions about how to run an online discussion using Dialogue App, contact Gillian Crea or Ben Fowkes | 0845 638 1848 (UK) +44 1173 812 989 (anywhere else).

Dialogue App makes it easy to get hold of your data at any time during the discussion or after it has closed.  Here’s a quick overview of the information that Dialogue App provides.

1. Top-line stats
When running a Dialogue, you often need to get hold of quick, up-to-date statistics about the discussion.  This may be for a status report, press release, or just for your own curiosity.  The Results and Reporting control panel is accessible at any time, and provides the following top-line statistics:

• Number of registered users
• Number of users who have submitted ideas
• Number of ideas
• Number of comments
• Average number of comments per idea
• Number of ratings
• Average number of ratings per idea
• Number of tags
• Average number of tags per idea

2. Complete data exports
All the information collected by the Dialogue is available for download at any time. You’re most likely to need this information after the dialogue closes, for creating a final report, but it’s also useful for putting together an interim report, a mailing list, or for performing more complex analysis than the top-line stats provide.

The following data sets are available for download in CSV format:

• Full user profiles (username, email address, mailing list opt-in status, custom demographic information)
• All ideas (title, description, username of submitter, date, average rating, number of ratings, number of comments, list of tags, moderation state) sorted by creation date
• All ideas (as above, sorted by average rating)
• All ideas (as above sorted by number of comments)
• All comments (idea that comment is associated with, username of submitter, date, comment)
• All tags (tag name, number of uses)

CSV files can be opened in spreadsheet packages such as Microsoft® Excel®, or databases such as Access®.  Delib can also create custom downloadable reports on request.

3. Web Analytics
Dialogue App is compatible with Google Analytics (and other online web stats if required).  This provides invaluable information about your site’s visitors, including:

• Number of visitors to the homepage and to individual ideas
• Breakdown of visitors by geographic territory
• Breakdown of visitors by operating system, web browser and capabilities
• How visitors arrived at your site (search engine, link from another site etc)

We can help you with setting up Google Analytics if you don’t already have an account.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a hyper-local discussion that attracts tens of users and results in a dozen great ideas, or a highly-publicised national debate that gives you 50,000 ideas and a quarter of a million ratings to analyse.  We’ve helped clients with both of these, and a great many in between. 

Does your organisation need dialogue? We’ll talk you through how it works and how to succeed: Gillian Crea or Ben Fowkes | 0845 638 1848 (UK) +44 1173 812 989 (anywhere else)

The key to the process is a low barrier to entry.  People can approach the discussion with a low level of commitment and, as they become more engaged in the discussion, they can increase the time and effort they put into contributing.

Level 1. “Just browsing, thanks”
Any visitor to the Dialogue can read all user-submitted content (except content which has been removed by moderators).  They can browse the ideas, sorting them by date added (most recent first) by popularity (highest rated first) or by level of engagement (ideas with most comments first).  Visitors can also search for ideas by keyword or tag.

Tabs let users sort by most recent, highest rated, and ideas with most comments

Even at this stage, before they’ve submitted anything at all to the Dialogue, visitors can make an important contribution to the discussion. Each idea has Twitter and Facebook buttons, so they can share the idea with their social network contacts, extending the reach of the discussion and inviting even more participation.

Tweet and Facebook buttons let users share ideas with their friends

Level 2. “Couldn’t agree more”
After browsing the ideas for a while, it’s likely that the visitor will have opinions, positive or negative, about some of the ideas.  Dialogue App lets users anonymously rate other people’s ideas with a number of stars between 1 and 5.

Visitors like this level of interaction because it’s perceived as low risk.  Their name is not associated with the rating, and they can change or retract their rating at any time, but they are still having a measurable impact on the discussion.

Users can view the current rating of an idea, and add or change their own rating.

Another way of participating anonymously in the discussion is by tagging ideas.  A ‘tag’ is a one- or two-word description of the idea, which other visitors can use to browse similar ideas.

A ‘tag cloud’ in the sidebar of the site shows the most commonly-used tags.  The more often a tag has been used, the larger it’s displayed, which gives a really clear overview of the key topics being discussed and their relative importance.

The tag cloud shows commonly discussed topics

In order to participate actively in the discussion (adding ideas, comments, ratings or tags) the visitor must register on the site.

It’s vital that the signup form does not put people off, so the Dialogue App just collects the bare minimum of information: a username, email address and password.  It takes seconds to fill in.

There is the option for clients to add extra fields to this form, but we generally recommend against it, as a long signup form is one of the easiest ways to lose people’s interest.

The signup form asks for the bare minimum information.

Level 3. “Yes, but…”
Once a user has registered and expressed their opinion anonymously about ideas, they will often want to provide more detail, argue a specific point, or justify their postive or negative rating.

Registered users can add their own comments to all ideas, except those that have been closed to further discussion by a moderator.

Comments are quick to submit: the form is designed to encourage users to keep their comments quite short, although in practice a comment can vary from a couple of words to several paragraphs.

Users can post a comment to the end of the discussion thread

All comments include the username of the person who posted it (the user’s real name and email address are never made public).  Seeing their name associated with their comments naturally increases the user’s sense of participation in the community, and so we see this as the next step in their commitment to the discussion.

Level 4. “And now for something completely different”
Of course, new ideas are the core of the Dialogue, and a really engaged user will want to put their own ideas up for debate, as well as commenting on other people’s ideas.

Submitting an idea requires a little more effort than submitting a comment: users need to give their idea a title, then describe the idea, and they are also asked ‘why is your idea important?’  This encourages users to think more carefully about their idea before they submit it and helps maintain the quality of the discussion.

Users are asked for a title, description, and explanation of why their idea is important.

Ideas can contain basic formatting such as bold text, and users can embed images and links to other websites.

Users who have submitted ideas are very likely to return to the Dialogue time and again to read the comments and further engage in the debate.

Level 5. “A bit about me”
Once a user has posted ideas or comments to the discussion, and seen their username published alongside their submission, they are likely to notice that their username is also a link to their personal profile.

A user’s profile shows a list of all the ideas and comments they have submitted, and can also include selected pieces of information that the user chooses to publish about themselves, if the Dialogue is configured to ask for it.  While we discourage asking huge numbers of questions in the signup form, the personal profile is the place to collect information about more engaged users, who will often provide it voluntarily.

Dialogue App can be customised to ask users for demographic information

Users with large numbers of ideas, or highly rated or discussed ideas, can become minor celebrities in the context of the discussion, and often like to give more information about themselves than just a nickname.

Profile information can be public (eg occupation, city/county of residence, areas of interest) or private (eg ethnicity, postcode, email address etc).  When setting up a new Dialogue App we can advise on commonly collected demographic information, and how best to ask for it.

Dialogue App is proven to be an effective tool for policy crowdsourcing and budget consultation.  The numbers show just how easy it is for the public to get involved: we’ve run Dialogues such as HM Treasury’s Spending Challenge where 36,000 registered users submitted 45,000 ideas, and over a quarter of a million ratings.  HM Government’s Your Freedom dialogue attracted similar levels of participation.  If you’re interested in finding out more about Dialogue App, contact rebecca@delib.co.uk | 0845 638 1848.