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

Our platform had exceeded all our expectations and objectives as it has become and still is the main source of information about the COVID-19 in Slovenia. Our data set is used by all major worldwide data aggregators (Johns Hopkins University, Our World in Data….). As the platform is available in some other languages, too, it is valuable also beyond our borders. 

It also has spin-off (localised) project in Macedonia.

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

Due to deliberate “no tracking” design of our services we do not measure website visits or similar metrics, therefore all feedback to the project is “circumstantial”: TW and FB followers and engagement, media interest, Medium articles statistics, Cloudflare statistics, Google search term statistics. 

Some data for 2021: 

Cloudflare: 557.000-715.000 unique monthly website visitors in 2021, daily peak was 110.000 Google search trends: 6.155.511 clicks on “sledilnik.org”as search result. Sledillnik also regularly outperformed the official source of data, NIJZ institute as search term with average popularity of 66:4. Medium articles: 21 published articles, top 3 read were 27k, 21k, 5,6k respectively YouTube: top 3 most viewed videos have 43k, 25k and 12k views respectively Twitter: 8939 followers and 12.6 mio impressions 

Media requests: over 160 press questions answered. 

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?

Positive response of the public and media was overwhelming and not expected in such volume, thus confirming our own assumption such tools are critical in order to manage an epidemic. We believe that the factors of success are strong, but accessible visual presentation of data in combination with our communications via other digital channels (social media) and directly through media. Facts, explained visually and in simple terms have proven to be an excellent example of crisis communication and citizens’ science & participation.

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

Our users have been very active and engaged and appreciated our daily, around the clock work in providing user-friendly data visualization regarding the state of play of COVID-19 in Slovenia. We were and still are the most trusted source of information. Moreover, the users also appreciated our proactiveness in providing prompt replies to their answers, concerns.

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

Tracker tool basically over delivered, as it has become a data source for Our world in data and JHU due to the quality of data sets. Tool has been central information point for most of media and population with high trust factor due to our independent status and rigorous data control.

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

As a community driven project, where structure, direction and motivation for the project are often lost or unclear, our “nobody is in control, we all are control” management approach did amazing job both in keeping community motivated and productive and in outperforming both official sources, as well as media attempts of making comprehensive COVID-19 dashboard.