Synthesis example 1

Jo Doe, Exiled journalist

Date conducted: 12 November
Date sent to Design: 12 November
Who is the user?
  • Name: Jo Doe
    • Forced to flee out of ethiopia 6 months ago — journalist
    • social activist, journalist, blogger
    • in sweden now in a refugee camp seeking asylum
    • walked to library for this call
  • Organization/Project name: Betu
  • Organization industry: Citizen journalism
  • Organization location: Ethiopia via Sweden (refugee)
  • Role/responsibilities in the organization: Independent project
  • Size of organization (number of employees): 1, with 3 potential volunteers
  • Est. budget of org: $0
What problem are they trying to solve?
  • Overall mission of the organization
    • bring to light abuses about human rights in ethiopia
  • Specific problems they are trying to solve
    • using social media to teach the people in ethiopia about the oppressive gov’t.
    • 2nd next to syria in terms of number of journalists who have fled from the country
    • hoping to contribute something on the platform to bring awareness to issues
Who from the org uses (or would use) the Ushahidi platform?
  • Which roles within the organization would be interacting with the platform and in what capacity?
    • This is an independent project being started by 1 person. There are 3 potential volunteers to help, but he will be managing everything.
  • What are those roles’ responsibilities?
    • Find data sources, manage incoming data and bring awareness to project
What is the current process for solving this problem?
  • at the moment, just using an online news website (blog) where he aggregates the news from all over the country and all over the world about this
  • never been exposed to a platform like this
What do they expect this platform to do for them?
  • trying to link in Facebook and twitter, mostly twitter — has found the “youngsters” use this because the idea of citizen journalism is still in infancy
What is the value of this tool to their organization?
  • He really doesn’t have any money to pay, but this would be invaluable to him.
  • If no numerical value is placed on it, have them describe the value
Key positive comments from user:
  • generally extremely excited to use this platform. Thinks it can make a huge difference in bringing awareness to the oppressive ethiopian government.
Key negative comments from user:
  • Needed a full walk through
  • we hadn’t approved him for a grassroots application. *note* -- this is because we asked him for more budget, not understanding the full story. We thought they were 4 swedish bloggers. not the case.