#JustAsk: Inspire users to be curious and make their first requests

[WilliamWDTK]

@garethrees:

A big challenge with ATI legislation is that it's quite an abstract, open ended concept. Even if you see the value of others' requests, it can sometimes be difficult to get over the line to make your own. I think the conversation goes something like…

Us: FOI is awesome! You can ask for anything!
Them: Oh, cool, but what should I ask for?
Us: Anything you want!
Them: …

We could do more to break this cycle.

A place that's seriously lacking in inspiration is /select_authority – a top level navigation item and the key entry point to making requests.

We should fill this page with messaging that:

Gives clear, concise examples of what others have asked for, to help you connect the dots between something you're curious about and how that might convert to an information request
Demonstrates that you, yes you, a regular person, can and should make requests
Shows what can come from just being curious and making requests

Here's a vision for what that might look like. We almost certainly won't have quite enough to get there in one step, but we can make a start.

This section should be largely focused on inspiring individual citizens. We know professionals and seasoned requesters won't need any encouragement to ask, so the content should lean towards things that other individual citizens have done and achieved.

Shorts: I'd love for us to have a collection of YouTube shorts where users take a little selfie video talking about what they asked for and why, ideally in a setting related to the request (for example, "I'm Alice and I wanted to know how nutritious my kids' school meals were, so I asked for the recipes and got them released" – stood outside the school gates). We could apply some wrappers with WhatDoTheyKnow branding, a link to the request, the #JustAsk hashtag, etc. If we can't get user-generated submissions, could we generate some animated ones? Or maybe there's a different way of doing this?

Case studies: These pull in our longer form content where we expand on the wider meta-process and reasons for requesting. These tend to be more focused on smaller CSO use, so perhaps there's an avenue to use Twitter[1] for publishing little snapshots of individual use and pull in.

Citations: These can show how requests go on to start huge conversations and make wider impact. While these often come from journalist and CSO use, we likely have examples that started small. Even if we're lacking, interpolating some of the bigger successes might help connect the dots.

A small selection of examples is totally fine for a first version. If we end up with loads of content, we could randomise what we show or add a "show more" button.

In future all this might get semi-automated via tags (we love tags!), but we can hard code it for the first pass. Even with this, we'll need to be scrappy to find a way to bridge current limitations. We don't import blog post images, but we can hotlink them. We don't have images for citations, but we could manually screenshot the pages. We don't have shorts – maybe we can reach out via an announcement + google form combo?
Footnotes

Using external platforms helps us put our messaging in front of users where they already are. [↩]

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@garethrees:

I'd love for us to have a collection of YouTube shorts where users take a little selfie video

This https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1680944677145509890. So emotionally resonant.

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@JenMysoc:

Helen has created JustAsk - so where does this leave this ticket?

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@garethrees:

Same name, but a different take on the idea. I'd still like to get to this, but happy to drop it from any "current" plans for now.

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Originally #1753

• Mistakenly destroyed issues #1858