project

Open Signal User Survey and Data Presentation

Yousef Hatlani

In November and December of 2017, I spent nearly 30 hours in the Open Signal lobby talking to members of our community about why they come to our space and whether they would be willing to pay a small fee for access to our resources.

In the end, 64 members of our community gave me 29,000 recorded words of freeform survey responses. I then worked with volunteer sociologist Malea Miller, who holds a Master of Social Work with a specialization in organizational justice, during January and February to carefully analyze the data. Malea provided a very important perspective, both for her expertise in the field and as an impartial third party.

Click here for a video recap of this project.

Goals

  • Survey the membership at Open Signal
  • Use the data to design a membership program that worked for the community
  • Stay true to the values of accessibility and equity

Outcomes

  • Core community members gave 29,000 words worth of feedback
  • The feedback was analyzed by Malea Miller, who holds a Master of Social Work with a specialization in organizational justice
  • The feedback was shared back to the community at a community meeting that was live broadcast on cable, live-tweeted, and had a live studio audience; it was also rebroadcast on Open Signal's channels

Learnings

  • Open Signal community members tend to have three primary goals: they want to learn something new, they want to teach someone else, and they want to collaborate with others
  • Open Signal community members are strongly opposed to anything they perceive may prevent others from having access to the benefits they've had
  • The vast majority Open Signal community members would give money to the organization under the right circumstances