Meeting with Equal Care Coop August 29, 2019

Owned by Dana Ayotte
Last updated: Aug 29, 2019
4 min read
  • Dana: Background of project - learning commons, hub, Co-design with other partners, where we are at with each of them
  • Emma: Hub focused on worker needs is interesting - e.g. worker can make a reasoned judgement for themselves to look at income and decide if they should be better off being self-employed
  • Emma: 
    • we are a multi-stakeholder coop, not just workers (care-givers) but care receivers and family too
    • But prioritizing these two sets of interests above all other interests 
    • We are in Alpha stage - flat prototype - formal version of MVP - loads of emails, google calendar starting off with a booking tool off the shelf, combining with other off the shelf tools and making it all work in the (physical) “back end” (office/admin)
    • Overall plan over next 6 months or so
    • Tech expertise - working with local agency - doing lots of co-design with them
    • Have raised up to $ 600,000
    • Creating a governance structure within the coop to deal with co-design of the tech
    • Mindful of how tech products tend to be developed - users as active participants in dev of it, proper voice and veto power, ongoing maintenance too
    • Because we are  multi-stakeholder: Design experience and lived experience together
    • 2-3 months it will take
    • Next 18 months big focus on the user-experience - needs of worker and person getting support and their families
    • The “how” will form part of those considerations - big picture...bring in some really important values that are not that common to how services are delivered in UK
    • People getting support are encouraged to give it too - everyone is on the platform! They all have profiles on the platform
    • We’ve got enough money to prioritise:
      • Good and ongoing governance on the co-design
      • Recruiting into the core team
    • Not so much/need support on:  Infrastructure and architecture that’s behind that - using Sharetribe flex until we can build onto it - something that the platform can sit on - shared with other labour-based platforms(?)
    • One of the larger coops - members of coop group in UK 
    • Our main interest - talking through potential governance structures to keep coop accountable to members, keep participation high
    • We’re not intending to employ a backend developer
    • What are the core things that platform coops will need around the world - really good scheduling , etc - core things that everyone is going to need - want to focus on these
    • What is it that all that sits on top of 
    • Bringing in CTO support 

Dana:

  • Interested in your co-design process and also the idea of ability for receivers to become givers and vice versa in the platform
  • I think where we can best support you will be in the co-design process
  • And Michelle can say more about the tech side of platform


Michele:

  • We’re building a hub - build this infrastructure
  • Finding existing tools
  • E.g. scheduling is super important but every space is different in terms of what is needed
  • Best to look at an ecosystem of tools and how they can work together
  • In next couple months - build the hub and try out some integrations
  • Emma: What kind of existing tools ?
    • Scheduling
    • Loomio
    • Expense tracking
    • What else - (we need to keep a list)
  • Emma: We’re trialing Vcita, but have trouble finding open source tools
  • Michelle - it will be a combo of proprietary and open source
  • Emma: 
    • Moving on to caregivers etc
    • So far only made a few detailed guesses
    • Haven’t done co-design on use of data form worker perspectives
    • It’s basically medical history and very personal - this is massive for us  
    • The data ethics need to be prioritized
    • HappyDev - Frech dev coop - sounds a bit like what they are doing - a dashboard of using separate tools discretely https://happy-dev.fr/
    • User testing - people receiving support mostly until now
    • Sounds like we can slot into quite readily for hub/dashboard
    • Co-design for dev and maintenance going forward
    • Keep the focus on worker needs for the dashbaord/hub

Jutta

  •  we have been grappling with this on other projects too
  • A diversity of perspectives and intent - how do we preserve ethics
  • Ethical risks, governance issues, privacy, ethical data use
  • It aligns well not just with this particular project but with others too


Emma

  • structures of mutual consent
  • E.g. Working with profile layers - interested in having someone support you - you can see a level of their profile info, if you book with them then you can see more, if you’ve worked with them for longer time, more data is released etc 
  • It cuts both ways- workers and customers too families, etc
  • Knowing who can see what and why - instead of this very real thing that typically happens where huge swathes of the “back office” can see a huge amount of stuff
  • Jutta: Transparency, agency, 
  • Emma: Nominated individuals to show your data to

Jutta

  • We’re working on an ISO standard that serves to negotiate who can use what
  • Has similar goals and aims - this meshes well with the work we’re doing


Moving forward:

  • How many and who in the room for co-design?
  • Jutta - we want to focus on people who have difficulty using tech - gnarly edge issues
  • Emma - we’ve got loads of that!
  • Kate: The mistrust goes very deep - this is key - a deep mistrust - rather than “I’m unable”
    • It should be easy to get people in the room who will be critical and engaged
    • September is impossible - October - middle October - Tuesdays and Thursdays good for co-design 
    • Fewer people but digging deeper (8?)
  • Jutta: if we have more than a certain number - break into smaller groups
  • Kate:
    • Top out around 8 people - this is what we’ve been getting
    • Usability testing - we had 6 people throughout the day - super engaged and tons of feedback - almost not enough time for 6 - we have a lot of people who are committed
    • What about remote facilitation? How does this work?

Dana: we have been encouraging facilitation to come from the members/community but we can talk more about what this could look like

  • Let’s schedule next meeting for beginning of October (Monday, Oct 7, 8am PDT / 11am EDT)
  • Then we can probably do co-design towards end of October
  • Jutta:  In the meantime we can send info about the hub and the questions that we have, the uncertainties, as well as ways we can support your work 
  • Emma: anything you need from us that would help
  • We will see Emma in November at the conference!