Community Animator Project

Our Idea is simple:

Communities are often siloed preventing ‘true’ community vision

We inspire connections borrowing design of popular geosocial networking apps

Here + free time = Community Animation

WHAT WE’VE DONE

Since developing the Android App and website, we’ve engaged potential users and actual users: Development is ongoing.

FIRST, INSPIRE A MEETUP

We surveyed potential users to determine which of three use case scenarios would lead to a set of civic gains.

  • Interest-based
  • News-based
  • Task-based

SECOND, A HAPPENING®

After adopting interest-based as our meet-up category, we hosted a happening, or event to test the app, in a campus cafe.

So far, the views on potential community gains seem to be consistent, but we’re continuing development to improve the design in light of the intended purpose of the app.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

We are broadly interested in how we might facilitate the role of community animators. Specifically, we are measuring:

RQ1) How are particular design features more or less helpful in achieving civic gains?

RQ2) How are particular design features  useful for facilitating community animation?

I have developed an initial application to identify how these community interactions can create shared trust, collaborations, and a “win-win” culture for siloed groups. Recently, I am developing a new application version to discover ways to preserve these conversations in a low effort manner so that innovative community conversations can be shared with a wider audience.

Please, contact me for more information, comments and suggestions!

Here some more information about the project:

Community Animator website: https://communityanimator.ist.psu.edu/

Community Animator – Penn State News:  http://news.psu.edu/story/392239/2016/02/12/research/animating-community

Jomara Bindá

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