Stage

Maintaining

README

Project Summary

Each year, the Philadelphia Bike Coalition oversees an army of volunteers to collect bike ridership data across the city of Philadelphia. Today, the data collection and data analysis processes are all completed with the use of pen, paper, and lots of data entry.

We want to help the Bike Coalition (and any future users) spend less time with data management grunt work so that they can spend more time using the data!

Instead of using paper forms, we aim to provide a digital solution allowing survey volunteers to collect data with a mobile-ready website (or hybrid native app), staff members to export data quickly, and track annual survey progress. Going digital will streamline the process of managing the annual surveys with a key benefit of dramatically reducing the level of effort for survey data entry and cleansing.

Long-term, we're excited for this system's ability to lower the barrier to performing additional surveys, outside of the Bike Coalition's typical annual count. We're equally excited for the potential to extend this platform to other cities or use cases involving surveys!

LINKS

Summary of (Potential / Hopeful) Benefits

Better

  • More accurate survey results
  • Improved analytic and reporting capabilities
  • Reduce data collection errors
  • Reduce data entry errors
  • Possibly collect additional data and attributes not currently collected

Faster

  • Reduce administrative / data entry time to collect and summarize survey results
  • Faster volunteer "onboarding and ramp up" to survey procedures and processes

Cheaper

  • Reduce time spent by Bike Coalition Staff on data and survey administration

Quicker

  • Enhance Bike Coalition Staff’s ability to edit / change / update survey procedures or data collection attributes in the future
  • Facilitate improved survey collection for other bike advocacy groups across the country.

Interested in Helping? Come on down! Here are areas where we'd welcome assistance:

  • UX design (junior or senior level) skills - We'd welcome someone taking our current UX to the 'next level'.
  • Beta Testers are always welcome
  • Python developers - we use Python and the Django framework for our backend APIs, database integration and admin web portal
  • HTML5 development skills - Both our registration web portal and base mobile app are developed using HTML5, CSS, & Javascript
  • Experience with Apache Cordova (which we use to streamline mobile app development across both iOS and Android)
  • If interested, shoot an email to: Rich (rmcmillen50 AT gmail.com)

Project Activity

Update #7

Recently have been adding a bunch of minor usability improvements for the survey counting experience. Also have updated various countdown timer logic and added a header when the user is in a "portrait" device orientation that recommends he/she rotate their phone in order to complete the survey count. I'm feeling pretty good about being ready to share the latest experience with the Bike Coalition.

Short-term help needs includes testers (would like to see the web app experience rendered on as many different devices as possible) and of course any mobile web developers interested in improving the UI look & feel.

Update #6

Here's a summary of activity that last two weeks:

  • Began using a Slack Channel for team collaboration (less email, hoorary!). You can find it here
  • Rich onboarded two new teammembers, Alex and Yoav.
  • Rich and Joe met for "app deployment 101". New "Deployment" Google document has been posted to team Google drive repository.
  • Joe deployed latest code (from Rich in Feb 2016) to our QA environment. Here's a link to the QA web portal —- where a user could signup for an account / register for survey appointments:

Update #5

August 2015 - Development and testing continues on. Rich and Roy have been adding features to the web portal that survey admins can use for reporting.

Current Needs: - Anyone interested in helping with our HTML5 + Cordova mobile apps. We're on the last stretch of tweaks and bug fixes as we want to start our next beta testing round. - Anyone interested in helping with our Django/Python + bootstrap enabled web portal - used for survey management and reporting.

…. note - Any experience levels welcome. Rich (who's typing this) has been learning Python over the past two months for the first time.

If you want to get in touch, email Rich at any time! (rmcmillen50 AT gmail DOT come). If you want to poke around more, check out our github repository linked above.

Thanks!

Rich

Update #4

May 2015 —- We continue to build / test / triage our latest apps on iOS on Android. We've been experiencing challenges with our HTML form we're using to collect our actual rider survey data. Our goal is to fix the current issues to allow for a beta test with the Bike Coalition staffers as soon as possible.

Update #3

It's been way too long since I added an update.

In the past few months we have:

  • Developed working beta versions of the Android & iOS mobile survey native apps (HTML base - using Cordova)
  • Developed online registration / sign-up portal (where users will schedule their surveys)
  • Performed QA testing
  • Met multiple times with Bike Coalition Staff to solicit feedback, share progress, and setup beta testers

Upcoming we will:

  • Continue bug fixing
  • Continue beta user testing
  • Create assets, media, and content for launches inside App Stores (Could use assistance here! Email, if interested)

Update #2

Here are some updates covering the past few weeks.

  • Begun building proof of concepts associated with the volunteer survey count mobile app (building in HTML5, but leveraging PhoneGap to ultimately provide a native app for volunteers)
  • Began testing the user experience through mock "on the street" counting
  • Met with Bike Coalition staff to obtain early feedback and collect further detailed requirements

If anyone is still interested in becoming engaged, please don't hesitate to contact Rich, Joe, or Mike! Development talent, user interface design talent, marketing talent, or any type of "in training" skill sets could be leveraged.

-Rich

Update #1

Over the past 3 weeks we've:

  • Created a true backlog
  • Grew the team by 1 (Zach who's going to begin android app development)
  • Started building a few different UI design mockups (goal is to pass around to collect ad-hoc feedback over the next few meetups)