Best Practice Object (formerly Solution Object)
Revised Solution Object now called a Best Practice
Object has several tab views: Home, About, Gallery, Manage Content, Manage Members. These slide shots show first the About tab and then the Home Tab. This mock-up draws on a Best Practice developed by Rare - it has been trucated and should not be considered a live Best Practice.
About tab: houses the meta data about the Best Practice. The main sections are:
Key Info - general information and contact details for Best Practice owner. Includes Conservation Community Info - A section specific to the Conservation Community that tags the Best Practice using several taxonomies to make it easier to search for. These taxonomies include IUCN Conservation Action type, IUCN Conservation Threat Type, Stakeholder Type, Species Name, IUCN Habitat type
Description - Description of the Best Practice
Attached Materials - future standard Wiser Earth functionality
Network - what the Best Practice is connected to in Wiser Earth (other organizations, people, projects, other Best Practices etc)
Home tab: houses the actual Best Practice content. It is possible that this content will be housed as an attachment (in the About section) or found using the Website link (i.e. on someone elses website). However, should a person want to input the content on Wiser these would be the standard sections for capturing the information.
Background - how and why the Best Practice was created
Target Audience - to whom the Best Practice is directed (stakeholder focus)
When to Use - Self-explanatory. Red A in circle shows a graphic that could be added using a wiki data entry
What to Do - Steps towards executing the Best Practice. Red B in circle shows a Technique section which would be a new functionality in Wiser Earth to input pictures and text in a step by step comic strip style fashion. Red C in a circle shows a Video. Red D in a Circle shows an embedded attachment (a PDF in this case) which can be clicked on to expand.
Tips - useful hints for implementation
Equipment & Supplies - Equipment and supply list and where to buy them
Assessment - Approach for assessing effectiveness of implementation
Resources - Places to go for more information
Comments (1 - 7 of 7)
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Flag comment for removal bowo 3 months ago
Angus, have just revisited this page and was wondering whether or not it needs to be linked to the suggestions group for further elaboration and voting? This is such an excellent idea that the wider community needs to be aware of.
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Comment from Will Murray with response by Angus Parker:
WM: Wow, I like this whole thing. Seems easy to use, easy to find stuff, easy to get right to the goods. If held hostage in a cold, dark place until I coughed up some ideas for improvement: WM: Would you consider adding in a box somewhere prominently (frame or hover maybe) about what conservation impact this BP had (e.g. RARE reduced amount of turtle poaching by 84% after the puppets arrived) or something like that? The reason I bring this up is just looking at one organization’s newsletter. Very nice, colorful, well-designed, well- written, etc etc. However, the stories are about meetings, plans, conferences and awards, but not a single story about any conservation achievement. That got me thinking about tying these BPs to some discernible conservation result such that the people looking for stuff could imagine how they could make a real difference in their own projects with this technique. AP: This mirrors a suggestion by another person. I think this is a very good idea and I will reflect it in the next iteration. WM: I’ll bet that you have already figured out a way to keep all the coordinates etc relatively current. There is so much turnover in this business that the contacts and their coordinates may change frequently. How to keep up with all these comings and goings? AP: I suppose at a minimum we should have an automatic email sent to the person who posted the BP asking them to make any updates to both the BP but also its linked network. |
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Glad that this version of the best practice works for you. The tool bucket is purposefully smaller and lower down because this section is specific to the conservation community – i.e. would not be on a health best practice. But I think what would set you mind at rest would be the creation of a portal that helps you search by threat and action buckets and returns the results that way. That is the next step I will be working on – I’m thinking most likely of a single screen where you can search using the following:
Threat – all, or multi-select drop down Action - all, or multi-select drop down Habitat – all, or multi-select drop down Species – open text Key word – open text Select to show just Best Practices, Service Providers/Orgs, and or Projects Slides 10-11 are just place holders for case studies. Perhaps what I need is an example of a case study… in some ways I think it is better if the case study is part of the book contents of the Best Practice rather than a linked item. Linking to examples projects and people would be in the network section – but this needs to be more robust than Wiser has it now – it’s easy to link to something but not to describe what the link relationship is. All fields in all Best Practices ‘book contents’ would be the same. That would be standardized. If you want to create a new Best Practice that is what we would be looking for, but existing ones could be simply attachments using the ‘Book Cover’. I’m assuming that most Best Practices at first will only be Book Covers with an attachment. Also that the book content piece would likely be filled out first for a new Best Practice that a group on Wiser Earth is creating, and then later a cover added. But where there is data showing in two places there would be no need to do double data entry – it would simply show up pre-populated. Hope that makes it clear. Any more thoughts or concerns? |
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Comment from Paul Butler:
Dear Angus, Yes. This looks good. I think somewhere prominently on the book cover it should show from which tool bucket this tool is from ie. Action Type: 4.3 Awareness & Communications but much larger than currently shown. I also wonder about repeating the background in the description section. I think it is fine to have it only in one place. I like the format, the key will be searching it and the ability for people to link to other examples, as well as the review process and standardizing fields. For example will the fields: Description, Stakeholder focus, What to do, Tips etc be the same for all tools from Solar ovens, to irrigation pumps? Paul |
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In response to Olivia's comment. I totally agree that it would be best to have a short section that describes what the Best Practice is about up front on the 'About Section'. The reason there are two tabs 'About' and 'Home' is that I am expecting that the vast majority of postings will be metadata (i.e. where and what the Best Practice is) in the About tab - with an attachment or website link and that only relatively few Best Practices will have the Home tab with all the relevant actual Practice data included. The thinking for the Home tab is that it is best to give people a template if they want to create or trascribe Best Practices in WiserEarth. Peggy has suggested that we think about having two types of Best Practices - those with just the About tab and those with both the About and Home tabs. Analogous to a Book Cover and a Cover and Book. Any thoughts?
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Just started to type a comment and then tried to backspace, and the whole thing got erased. Apologies if it thus shows up twice. My first reaction to the solution object is to wonder whether the meat of the solution can be featured first, with identifiers (the things that Angus lists below) on a secondary page for those who are hooked enough by the description of the object to want to know where to go for more. I worry that users who are not savvy web-users will be put off by those identifiers and will not find their way to the good stuff. So in the sample object, for instance, could the searcher be greeted by a short summary paragraph describing how Rare uses puppets? This might make a search easier for folks who are daunted and might be stopped short by technical-sounding language.
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A mock-up of what a Solution Object might look like in Wiser. Includes the following fields:
Title/Question: Title and rephrasing as a question Solution/Threat Type: Cross-referenced to the IUCN approved taxonomy of solution and threat types Keywords Species: Scientific Classification – i.e. Genus Species Ecosystems: IUCN Classification Authors / Orgs Owner / Group Owner: Who created the solution Created / Revised: Date the solution listing was added or revised in CYP Review Level: External Peer Review, Internal Peer Review, No Peer Review Endorsement: Organizational / Group endorsements of the tool Project Examples: Descriptions of projects where the solution was used Service Providers: People or organizations that provide support in implementing the solution Rating: Average all off reviews Description: Brief description of the tool and its uses Implementation Steps: Step by numbered step (up to 10) on how to use the solution Materials: Either links to or attachments of key materials Reviews: Sequential list of all reviews / comments left by users relating to this solution listing |
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