1. Reflect back on the objective of the tool you built: did you exceed it, or fall short? If so, why?

The main goal is to activate people who have previously not been involved in the activities organised by the NGOs and informal collectives. However, this is in fact not being measured so we cannot be certain that we have reached this aim. However, we have noticed that the portal has served as an excellent tool for informing the press who then publish the information on other channels and share our invitations to the events posted on the portal.
This was one of the smaller goals, and we have achieved it. We think that the main obstacle for including new people into the activities of the NGOs is that the potentially interested people do not know what they can participate in, and this tool makes it easier for them to find
out. This is why we believe we have reached our main goal.The main goal is to activate people who have previously not been involved in the activities organised by the NGOs and informal collectives. However, this is in fact not being measured so we cannot be certain that we have reached this aim. However, we have noticed that the
portal has served as an excellent tool for informing the press who then publish the information on other channels and share our invitations to the events posted on the portal. This was one of the smaller goals, and we have achieved it. We think that the main obstacle for including new people into the activities of the NGOs is that the potentially interested people do not know what they can participate in, and this tool makes it easier for them to find
out. This is why we believe we have reached our main goal.

2. What are the tools’ metrics for success and what does metric say – how well did the tool do?

The most important metrics is the daily number of unique visitors. This number is in line with our expectations, and it also grows in line with our expectations. However, a very pleasant surprise was the activity of the users once they come to the portal. Each user looks up the information about at least two events, while the record-holders collect information about as many as ten events.

3. Were your assumptions that the tool you built would: increase participation/engagement or tackle an issue/raise awareness correct? Do you think you chose the right approach – and what would you do differently?

Very often people say something like: „I would have come sooner if I had known you existed “, pa assuming that the broader public is not acquainted to the work of the NGOs was not an act of deep wisdom. The best way to solve this problem would probably be paying for expensive ads in the media, and this is something that non-profit
organisations cannot afford. The Internet is the logical solution, and a possible alternative to the portal would be designing an app. However, since Zelena akcija already manages one mobile app aimed at the broader public, we know how difficult it is to convince people to even download the app, and even more difficult to make them use it. This is why we decided that the portal was the best option because information is easily accessible there. However, what surprised us was how difficult it was to advertise a new web portal in the vast ocean of web sites, and especially how difficult it was to advertise it to a target audience who originally does not follow NGOs. We considered advertising on social media a magic wand, but we then realised da that it has significant limitations and that a large amount of money is needed to reach the target, albeit it is much smaller than the amount necessary to advertise each NGO individually..

4. What are you hearing from users? What do they enjoy in tool? What do they find challenging?

We mostly do not receive any feedback from the public except the likes on social media. Feedback from the NGOs is very varied and vey useful. The initial feedback referred to the idea of the portal and were extremely positive (and we are still getting such feedback). When the portal first started, we were receiving a lot of complaints about bugs and about the interface not being intuitive enough. After we fixed that we stopped receiving feedback about the functionality, and we consider this a positive thing.

5. Did your tool deliver what you were hoping for? Are they useful for your key user audience? Are they being adopted?

About half the visitors of the portal are regular visitors, and this is a good indicator that the portal is useful. Unfortunately, it seems that the NGOs have not recognised the value of the portal. They have the possibility to upload their own events onto the portal and only a small number of NGOs does this. Before and during the design process we expected that our role would be that of a moderator but that the reality is that we are the ones who have to upload the information about events. Considering the fact that we are currently following around 200 NGOs from all over Croatia, which organise a huge number of events, we are spending a lotof time uploading them onto the portal, and we are doing this as volunteers.

6. What worked well through the implementation process? What areas have room for improvement?

What has so far functioned the best was the planning. Before creating the portal, we had sent a very detailed questionnaire to all the NGOs and collectives we could think of un order to see what they really need. The results of the survey helped us set the priorities which we were guided by during the design process.
We designed the portal ourselves and it was a great opportunity to learn. Initially, this job was supposed to be carried out by a team of five people, but at the very beginning there were only two of us left, and in the end, it was just me. And I am a student and working on
another project. This made the entire process very stressful and long, but in the end we got what we wanted. The design process is still not finished because in the meantime we have come up with new features, and we also got some ideas from the users.