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

The tool is constantly evolving, in fact, we set up a first version, a version that has lasted us 5 years, but you catch us at a time when we are going to launch a second improved version of Osoigo, with what we have learned over the last 5 years, in terms of user experience, and also in terms of knowledge, because before it had a lot of functionalities that we don’t use today. So, it is a question of focusing the product on the Osoigo platform, based on the feedback that people have given us when using the platform, and it is constantly evolving. We have a product team that is proposing changes, that is proposing improvements. In the usability of the users we also see that certain buttons, certain areas and those sections of the platform work better than others and we are optimising them.

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

On the one hand, we have already reached one million registrations worldwide, with 80% of these registrations coming from Spain and 20% from the rest of the countries, which are divided into 5 Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Peru. This is a metric of, at least for us, one million users who have registered and signed a campaign at some point. Currently we have about 300,000 users who sign campaigns per month.

After that, we have more than 500 politicians of all kinds of positions, colours and competences, from ministers, councillors to all the Spanish chambers and also some ministers in Chile, mayors, deputies in Mexico and Chile. And, above all, we have obtained more than two and a half million signatures in total from these users, with an average of 2.50 signatures per user. We also distinguish the 3500 associations, neighbourhood platforms or civil society agents, regardless of their legal form, organisations that have registered and participated.

Of these, some 50 are fully professional, for example Greenpeace, Save the Children, Amnesty International, UNHCR, Médecins sans frontières, etc.

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?

As to whether our assumptions with which we created the tool were correct, well, we didn’t invent the wheel. Change.org has been around since 2008, so we didn’t invent the tool, but what Osoigo has had is the focus, in terms of what kind of issues or what kind of petitions campaigns are targeted at. Change.org is a monster in the sense that it has the capacity to get 100,000 or 200,000 signatures without complaint. Osoigo does not have that engine, but we also gave it a chance and what we have learned is that our impact or our field of action is the municipalities, the provincial councils, those incidents that are more local and do not have a place on a platform like Change, that is what we want to cover. We want to capture around 2,000 signatures in a campaign so that the politician, the councillor or the mayor of the day responds. That is our field of action, at municipal, provincial and regional level, and we believe that the tool itself has allowed us to do this from the beginning, that is to say, at a technological level, no, nothing changes, but if we focus more on local campaigns, that is where I can hear you, we believe that I can provide a differential value.

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

There is obviously a bit of everything, the greatest experience or contact with the Osoigo team is with the authors of the campaigns, those who launch the campaign and start disseminating it, and those are the ones who have the strongest link with the brand. Many of them are very happy because we have a response rate from the politician of two out of every three questions. What happens is that sometimes we miss our three possibilities, because the type of response from the politician is banal. We can say that they have responded but the user who launches the campaign is not getting anything concrete, or they do not close a meeting with the politician or not, if they do not get a clear and useful response, that is where some of them tell us that the tool works, the politician has heard us, but they do not listen to us, they do not give us a useful solution for us.  Therefore, there is also a percentage that has asked us to improve the tool, but also the usefulness of the tool or the response of the politician. It is also a challenge for us to get committed politicians who really want to contribute. This is something we have always been asked for.

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

It is linked to what I said before. The tool is still a tool, we are a bridge. If we talk about cases, every month we have a couple of cases, three or four victories or success stories and one, well, one that doesn’t achieve what it wants to achieve. The tool works and could work better, because we have to use the virality of the huts to facilitate, how to disseminate these campaigns, to be able to generate signatures by the author of the campaign, but also from Osoigo, to offer a service, to give it a powerful push by emailing with our database, advertising, etc. So, we are working hard on these resources that Osoigo can provide to the author of the campaign, but, above all, the success of the tool lies in the fact that they can start a journey, take that first step towards that objective, which the person, the family or the group must have. We are working on it, but we want to optimise it much more, with a much higher success rate than we have today.

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

In the implementation process we didn’t do a manual tool design process, we did it with a backend programmer. Then a freelance designer came on board and we had to tell him about the platform and his mission for it, but he came on board about halfway through the process, so things had to be changed and improved. I think they have worked well because a million users have registered and that is infallible. The signature part, I think we can improve it because at the beginning we added many functionalities that are not being used today, but the product obviously has to evolve to offer the campaign author tools to carry out campaigns, to offer our database as a service so that they can get the campaigns.

And now we are opening a new line offering participation, SAS (software as a service). We have come across several NGOs, several platforms that are not so professional but that have their budgets and want to launch a signature campaign, but they want to do it under their brand, apart from our platform. This has led us to create a tech team that we are improving and adding functionalities based on what our clients are asking us for, and also those that work, we are incorporating them into our Os oigo platform. In the end, it is the same technology for both lines, Osoigo.com and Osoigo.net, which is the software line for the other brands. At the end of the day it is still a software for user participation and interaction. And we are developing a lot of material and a lot of tools.