Tangerine Bee

Falling in love with digital publishing

Team — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:00:55 +0000

It goes without saying that we love digital publishing and the potential to reach large audiences and in real time if required. Here are three some aspects that make us smile.

Starting with the infamous Hans Rosling who shows the power of interacting with data in the digital world,

“The shareability factor is marvelous” L.L Barkat on interview about the biggest gain received from digital publishing and crowdsourcing is one ultimate example. Ushahidi is an awesome one that stands out as it not only gives the mapping and reporting tool for publishing into your own digital space, but also gives the platform online to utilise through crowdmap.

Digital can be short, long, and best of all can be seen, heard, and visually fascinating.

And when you want to get your audience to be well and truly immersed, tie it in with the physical world

NZ Post Auckland Arts Festival ‘Noise Ink’ from &some on Vimeo.

Online questionnaire design for feedback in community projects

Team — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:00:59 +0000

There are essential demographic and other information that is important to capture as part of project evaluations. These can on paper seem daunting and in many ways time consuming in what is usually a time limited or time precious environment. Having supported and delivered online surveys for evaluating community-based projects delivered across organisations, here are some benefits that we think online surveys can give:
1. The great thing about online questionnaires is that it can be set up to ask different questions to different audiences, for example you can use trigger questions at the beginning such as the organisation or group name to ask very specific questions to that group whilst still keeping the generic sections of the questionnaire the same.
2. Where there are different accessibility considerations, you can republish the same questionnaire in slightly different formats, such as taking the colours, design and font size into consideration. This does not necessarily add a lot of time or resource, but helps ensure that all the potential contributors have the questionnaire presented in the most accessible way.
3. By it’s nature, online questionnaires can be in real time for delivering the responses in a ready to use format. So even if you get partial responses, you can set up a monitoring system that alerts you to the fact that the response has been received. This means that even as you are rushing to the next meeting, the very latest response can be used to inform your discussions.
4. Even where online questionnaires are not the most user-friendly and paper-versions have to be used, having an online format for entering the data means that anyone without database or analysis knowledge can enter the data using the online questionnaire from multiple locations. this also removes the worry of having one version of the database in one central location with only one knowledgeable person to access and enter the data.
5. The scalability of online questionnaires across organisations and individuals without affecting cost in quite the same way as paper versions is just something that cannot be argued with.

Whether the distribution is paper-based or email-based for evaluating the community projects, it just makes sense to have an online version, whether it is for the facilitators or participants to use.

Digital publications for data and reports

Team — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:05:32 +0000

It is no surprise with over 2 billion users online (stats for 2011), the global distribution of reports and data can be a digital story as opposed to just having printed publications, DVDs, and other formats. We have found that this really needs to be a consideration at the start of the project, where as the data is being collected, conversations take place on how it gets published with the audience and usability in mind. Aside from the benefits of not having a design and print costs that are associated with print publications, there are also benefits such as getting some of the data out early, engaging key audiences at different steps of the data collection and analysis process that is appealing with digital publications.

There are very exciting ways to get data out nowadays, and yes, they do have associated costs. As researchers and analysts, it is no longer possible to distance ourselves from the basic knowledge required for digital publications, which can start with simply attaching pdf documents, publishing simple graphs and amending updates. There are also cost-effective (without enduring the five figure sums), to get the data out in user-friendly formats. Part of the trick lies in using existing avenues and the other part in designing digital dissemination projects that are about reducing complexity without compromising quality and the key messages coming through. The tricks are there and we apply them as much as we can, as often as we can.

If it is about cost effective data dissemination or feedback, please do get in touch and we can talk you through some of the potential solutions.

Online Data Collections

Team — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:50:30 +0000

Online data collections are both quick and effective ways of collecting data. Although there are free versions that you can set up and run, it is not always easy to work out the best route and also take into consideration the best way to present the questionnaire so that the user will complete and submit it quickly. We have published online questionnaires and surveys for simple and complex projects. We can make sure that everything from the web address, questionnaire hosting, to the identity coming through on the questionnaire reflects your project or organisation as well as designing the questionnaire with the participant in mind. And very importantly, we monitor the responses, feedback to improve response rates and make sure that the data arrives in the most usable format ready for analysis (or even analyse it for you).

Cost is no longer a barrier for questionnaires and surveys and if you are not sure how you need to proceed and just need advice, or guidance, please do contact us and we can help you through the process. Even what looks like a complex questionnaire can go online with very minimal effort and cost, so why not give it a go.