Open Police Design Principles - Open Belgium 2016

Open Police

The design principles behind the open government platform of the Belgian Police.

www.openpolice.be@OpenPoliceBE

Open Belgium29 February 2016, Antwerp

Who are we?

www.timble.net

● I’m Tom Janssens (@janssenstom)

● Multidisciplinair and fully remote team, 15 strong

● Lead by Joomla co-founder Johan Janssens

● Deep roots in Open Source

● Developing the Open Police platform since 2010

On any internet enabled device near you.

www.openpolice.be/sites/

Local Police websitesUsed by 75% of Local Police zones & Federal Police

Sessions and Pageviews from 2010 till end of 2015

1. Start with user needshttps://flic.kr/p/eQtasQ

People come to our sites to accomplish tasks and fulfil needs

Not just to hang out

What does the user need?without Social Media acquisition

+75% visitors for Contact & Questions

Use caseDistrict officer search

Use caseYour district officer, contact info & office hours

2. Do lesshttps://flic.kr/p/bwHCXU

Re-use existing resources (like APIs)

Don’t reinvent the wheel every time

http://www.openpolice.be/blog/2014/09/12/streets-database.html

CRAB - AGIVFlemish streets database

http://www.openpolice.be/stack/

Open Source stack

3. Design with datahttps://flic.kr/p/cpzHPw

Don’t make assumptions

Watch and learn from real user behaviour

analytics.google.com

Heatmaps, Recordings, Funnels, Forms - www.hotjar.com

User testing

4. Do the hard work to make it simplehttps://flic.kr/p/qhd2dh

Making something look simple is easy ...

… making something simple to use is much harder

https://twitter.com/Paul_Framp/status/467398108985692160/

Before

https://twitter.com/Paul_Framp/status/467398108985692160/

After

5. Iterate. Then iterate again.https://flic.kr/p/byypYZ

+400 closed development tickets since September 2013.

Start small and iterate wildly

Add features and refinements based on feedback from real users

http://www.openpolice.be/blog/2014/09/10/schedule-a-news-article.html

Schedule a news article

6. Build for inclusionhttps://flic.kr/p/faH5Lt

Accessible design is good design

Make it inclusive, clear and readable

http://www.dekamer.be/flwb/pdf/53/3403/53K3403001.pdf

http://bradfrost.com/blog/web/mobile-first-responsive-web-design/

Mobile First Progressive Enhanced

Old browsers?

They’ll get the most basic version: single column layout & not enhanced with Javascript.

It’s that easy!

7. Build digital services, not websiteshttps://flic.kr/p/gtrSxL

schema.org

JSON Linked Data

http://jsonapi.org/

Provide Open Data

Accessible, machine-readable standardized data that others can use.

Downloadable spreadsheets or CSV files

http://www.lokalepolitie.be/5388/nieuws.json

RESTful APIThe platform is designed around the HTTP protocol. All data is available

through a level 3 JSON REST API.

8. Understand contexthttps://flic.kr/p/o3ZQHn

Understand the circumstances

Nuisance at night

9. Be consistenthttps://flic.kr/p/9KR59t

Same design patterns and language

So users will have a reasonable chance of guessing what they’re supposed to do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide

Digital divide

The gap between those who have access to information and the skills to make use of it and

those who do not have the skills.

Average digital literacy decreases when digital audience increases.

10. Make things openhttps://flic.kr/p/nDzaE3

http://www.openpolice.be

Sharing helps

Try it yourself

www.openpolice.be/demo

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about/

Design Principles inspired by UK’s Government Digital Service

We build things for the webwww.timble.net

Thank youwww.openpolice.be - @OpenPoliceBE