10 Activities to Engage Communities and Gather Feedback
Are you a developer, trainer, organization, or tool team? Do you want to inspire participant engagement? Are you interested in gathering feedback on your own tools? Need fun feedback activities for a community event? You've come to the right place!
The "Exploratorium" is a collection of activities that seeks to make sure all voices are heard and represented. Choose a few activities to deploy back to back, use one to answer a specific question, or spread several throughout your event to gain deeper insights.
Mix and Match to Answer Your Questions
With so many activities to choose from, it can be tricky to know which ones to use. Try considering, "What do I want to learn?" or "How much time do I have?" We've outlined some specific questions below that the Exploratorium can help answer.
If You Have Questions About Your Users
“Who are my users?”
“How do people use my tool in their daily life?”
Try these activities
Persona Builder
My story
NArratives
If You Have Questions About Usability and Adoption
“Why aren’t people adopting it?”
“What is the single barrier preventing you from using this application?”
“Where are the usability pain points?”
“Can anyone use it?”
“Are users able to get started?”
Try these activities
First Use
Explain it
wordblock
If You Have Questions About Features
“Which features are people most interested in using?”
“What makes people love it?”
“Which are the most common and important issues to solve first?”
Try these activities
Capabilities (paper rating)
My first impression
Capabilities (digital rating)
If Your Questions Are General
“How well does this feature actually work for people?”
“Is my app inclusive?”
“Are people interested?”
Try These Activities
One Liners
explain it
Capabilities
My First Impression
Quick Reactions
Wordblock
Localization
We understand how important it is to localize activities. We currently have a few options localized, but would love to work together to do more!
Can’t Find What You’re Looking For?
Not getting your questions answered, need help or want more? Contact us for more curation guidance or to discuss ideas on how to get your questions answered! Contact us on Signal or WhatsApp @ +1 209.396.5087 or reach out through email.
Okthanks, Thanks You!
We set out to accomplish two things: create simple ways to gather honest feedback, and bridge the gap between tool teams and communities. Thus, the Exploratorium was born!
We started by asking the community, “If you could find out one thing from your users, what would you like to know?” We received 16 responses. From those 16 questions, paired with help from trainers and tool teams, we comprised 10 activities to help answer those questions.
You can find all the activities on the Exploratorium page. A facilitator guide accompanies every activity, outlining everything you need to know to deploy the activity. We hope these activities are of use to the community and look forward to creating more together!
We would love this collection to grow, so if you have activities you love or ideas for activities you’d like to see, please reach out.