 Thank you. I hope that the organizers will add a clap Before this talk so hi everyone. Thanks for showing up. This would be a little bit of a different talk today than the previous ones It's not about the code. It's not about development. It's more about the process of how we did this project in Croatia That I'm really proud of But before I begin couple of things about me, so This is my son. We like to fool around as you can see. This is me wearing the Well, I'm not sure how it's called in English So we fool around a lot we don't live together So it's really important for me to be there for him and he's made through motivation and I want to create a better world for him I'm a designer. I have 14 years around 40 years of experience and for the past 10 years I've been working with WordPress. I do make a living out of WordPress But I'm also specialized in designing touch screen user interfaces around an agency called luggage brothers Although we don't look alike. We are brothers believe it or not We don't hit each other we love each other but on this picture just to be dramatic we figure that we Will try something like hitting each other and I won I'm also a war pressure. I am Really fun of communities and I like to think of myself as an activist. So on this first picture on the left. There is a An association from Paula. That's my hometown The just a week ago celebrated their 10th anniversary of working with people with disabilities and this first website that we did for them 10 years ago was on WordPress. So WordPress really helped them promote their community programs I also co-organize WordPress meetup in Zagreb just So this is the picture from our last meetup two weeks ago. It was the 11th meetup We usually get somewhere around 52 80 90 90 people so much more than today but thanks again for showing up showing your support and We plan to have working Croatian split this year I was the lead organizer past year in Rijeka and this is also part of this story. So couple of things about Croatia Have you been to Croatia before? No, you should definitely come Okay, see you see you at work in Croatia. It's First week of September. So see you there It's a beautiful country these three pictures I took in the span of three three days first I was hiking on a mountain near Zagreb then I was Driving on a bus and this is a view of island stress and last one. This is from my hometown Pula, we have a beautiful Roman amphitheater 2000 years old there, but Croatia Also has problems There are a lot of differences between Croatia and Germany. So for example, Germany has 20 times more people and your budget is 70 times more Bigger than Croatia, you know, it's a huge amount of money that you have that we don't and you have two times Higher GDP per capita. So per people then we have and Because of all that we have a lot of differences of working with clients Our clients are less educated. We get lower budgets and Nevertheless clients expect the same quality that we deliver when we deliver a website so I would say and Argue that we can get the same opportunities like you probably Can in Germany, that's not a problem But there are a lot of differences because of that. We want to go to conferences outside We want to travel but it's a lot more expensive than when you were living living here in Germany and We try to Be as professional as we can be but these are problems and these are differences that you should take into consideration When thinking about what I will show you in this presentation So I say that we as professionals in Croatia have to be innovative and resourceful We have to change our process. We have to adapt to these circumstances So I'm going to give you one example in our agency We usually don't deliver All website templates in Photoshop So we do basically one to two templates in Photoshop and after that We go to HTML and build our templates there so we changed our process and That's not nearly all because we don't design Responsive websites in Photoshop. We don't design mobile version tablet version. So we changed our process and in this And at this time when we go to HTML we usually design breakpoints We usually design mobile first approach there and I could go on and on saying that We don't share wife friends with our clients because they're not willing to pay for those But nevertheless, we try to create those that are maybe lower fidelity than you should Probably do in your own process So can tell from what I'm talking about what is Croatia Croatia's biggest problems They ask people of Croatia what are four biggest problems there and the number one thing Was unemployment then economy poverty and corruption So around 20% of people are unemployed and that's a lot Economy has been in recession for eight years now So that's also a problem and people are leaving country because salaries are so low they are basically struggling and Try to make a living every day. So This week around thousand people left Croatia for good. They don't plan to return to Croatia anytime soon and just the past year around 50,000 people left Croatia and Of course, we have a problem with corruption as well But this first three plop problems is something that we cannot solve as individuals as individuals We cannot solve unemployment. We cannot solve the economy or the poverty rate because we don't like to protest we don't see ourselves as Sort of a protest nation we like to protest if it's something that we could like on Facebook So we have a lot of Facebook protesters But we almost never protest on streets and in Croatia We have a problem with corruption and lack of transparency and this is something we can try to solve as individuals But that's not nearly all There's not problem only with corruption most of our politicians do try to solve that but they just don't manage that We have a problem with vision and how to solve the corruption issue So we asked ourselves, can we help them? Can we help politicians solve that problems? corruption issues Come when you lack transparency When you don't work on your government transparency Some work have been done in the past, but that is not nearly enough So this is my favorite quote from Dalai Lama, which says a lack of transparency Transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity and it's definitely true. So I ask you why is transparency important? First of all, we want to know how is your money spent? We want to ask questions and get answers from our government and we want to be involved in the decision-making process as well So on top of that of all that we want to build a better democracy So this is something that is pretty normal here in Germany You have a long Long time democracy, but Croatia was not even on the map 25 years ago So we are quite a young democracy and having a two-way communication helps understand the problems of running a city and running a country And it builds trust between the government and the citizens and only like this you can build a better society at the end So in 2014 Gong that is association non-governmental association that Helps oversee the election process and it was really important in the 90s because we are such young democracy We were at war back then so we had to oversee this election process and in 2014 they They they started a survey and it's not the first one. So the first one was done in 2009 then in 2011 so in 2014 it was a third survey they did and the Main objectives is to see how citizen countries in Croatia Help build transparency and trust between the citizens and the local governments and the average score is 5.9 so when you see that you might think that it's a good score, but on a scale From zero to ten. That's somewhere in the middle I don't see it as a good score and 98% of local governments had their websites, but they are usually Liking the information required to have on the website so you have a situation that local government city has a website without any information that are obliged for for they're obligated for some reason by the law and On top of all that That's not the biggest issue the biggest issue is that there are there are no penalties for doing that So they are basically Not delivering information that are needed by the law, but there are no penalties. So one of the Croatian problems and we Started to think about working with Rijeka because Rijeka is the most transparent city in Croatia And it was in each survey. So the last year that the survey was Conducted Rijeka got a 9.6 Score which is really amazing. So we said Let's try to change things with Rijeka So this is Rijeka. I don't know if you know where Rijeka is. Rijeka is the largest Croatian port it's Close to Easter close to Italy. So it's around 50 kilometers from Slovenia from Italy. It's on the Where the couple of paths intersect so if you are if you were going to Croatia, then you you Could know that and the Rijeka is also the third largest city there There are four major cities Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Dostjak. Rijeka is the third largest city It has a population of around 130,000 people, but nevertheless It's four times smaller than Nürnberg and the Rijeka is a multicultural city There are a lot of nationalities living there side by side without problems without issues And it's really a multicultural city that we all from Croatia could learn about how to how to live in peace and harmony and Because of all that it's open for new ideas And as I said before Rijeka is the most transparent city and on top all that I think that you won't be surprised when I tell you that just two weeks ago Rijeka Received an award and it was selected as European capital of culture For 2020 so I think that they're doing such an amazing and important work So why Rijeka wanted Warpress? They used it before on couple of smaller projects. They know how to use it. That's the the main reason So Warpress is easy to use is easy to install easy to run so people know how to use it They know the administration interface They know how to change things themselves and this is what is really important to them the second thing is that Warpress is open source and they believed and I truly believe in that that It's in the best public interest. So in Croatia We have a lot of problems with proprietary CMSs and a lot of not Really transparent decision-making when creating a website for cities and governments and so on So it's definitely best public interest to have an open source platform that won't be dependable on anyone Nevertheless, that's us or someone someone else or some other agency and in 2003 Warpress revolutionized Publishing everything could get online and publish anything they wanted And I think that it truly helped not only in cities with democracies that are still still struggling but it Helped a lot of different people to publish their thoughts ideas So this is one of the reasons why Warpress is now used on quarter of the web and this was truly amazing and this happens even today and 10 years later Rijeka wanted Warpress to help it being more transparent So I would say that in this case and many other cases Warpress helps transparency as well And at that moment we decided that we didn't want to create a website for only one city But we rather wanted to create a platform so all the cities could use it but we had a problem Because as I want to say we didn't have any political ties and not only that but I was very critical about our national government two years ago when they decided to adopt that UK as their primary Design pattern for the new government website and they did that But they did it in a wrong way because they didn't think about the content They didn't think about the information architecture of the web. So They use it of course got UK is open source So anyone can use it by but they should have done a much better job And we shouldn't be satisfied with the average, but we should understand and aim for much more and They even issued a couple of press releases that were saying basically that my articles that I publish in couple of magazines are wrong So where is the problem you might ask so the national government and the local government Rijeka? Came from the same political party So with that in mind and knowing that Croatia still struggles with their democratic principles You might think that because of that we couldn't get the job, but we did Get the job nevertheless because Rijeka really wanted to work with us. So our approach was is that we wanted to make a better city website and we want to open source it and Definitely we want to design it in the open. So we started writing a blog started to document everything that has been done in this process and Maybe even more important for myself and a lot of community members in Croatia is that we wanted to make it accessible for everyone So when we started working with Rijeka, we asked We created a survey for the citizens of Rijeka and other cities as well And we asked them a lot of questions one of which was how much do you think that accessibility matters on the new website? And around 25% of them said it really matters and 75% of them just didn't answer that question or Said that it doesn't bother them. And this is basically the only issue the accessibility issue that One thing that we didn't listen to the public So we just ignored their answer because we believe and we think that accessibility really matters and What makes warpers great is this accessibility theme That are working really hard to make warpers better for people with disabilities and Rijeka said We want that too So there were a couple of questions Like how to even start working with them without public bid, so I'm not sure what's the situation in Germany but in Croatia everything about 25 approximately 1000 euros have to go to a public bid and I think that this is a perfectly natural but in Croatia we have Another problem with that because there are companies and there are individuals that just Use public bid to lower prices and to break this public bid process and in Croatia We don't have the ability to say hey, we want to use the The company or the agency that has the best economic value to us but we want to use the lower offer and People tried to fight on those grounds and they just didn't manage that The second question that was that we were afraid of was the public reaction So I will say that our final offer for this project was 23 around 23,000 euros and We usually charge much more because we are working with bigger clients We are working with companies that has specific goals We are trying to optimize everything we do so our prices are much higher and in Croatia 23,000 euros is a big a big budget and People are worth thinking. Hey, I I Earned that amount of money in a year and they are just doing a website anyone can do it and we were afraid of the professional community reaction as well, but Professional community was really eager really helpful and they did an amazing job supporting our effort on all that and our last thing that we were worried about worried about is if this is enough of a budget that we could work on so we could make this project happen in the end and At that point we just said this is maybe one in a lifetime opportunity and we want to invest Our time and we want to create something that is extraordinary And when we answer those questions we started thinking of a process and this is our process for When we started working with Reka so four phases analysis design HTML and WordPress and We try to adopt a principle of what we call agile design, so you all know about the agile development We wanted something else that we call agile design and it means that we will always communicate and innovate even in later stages of the project and we want to talk with citizens and cities to solve their real problems and above all that We want to make everything open for change anytime So we started with the analysis process. We plan for analysis to last for a week. I Practically moved to the Eka And I lived there Two months so I could work on site with the local team From from the city we analyzed hundreds of pages of content So I will go back a bit when if you remember that transparency survey The Eka was the most transparent city, but there was still a problem because all the information Was that was there on the website, but people don't seem to find that so the the thing is that Nevertheless, Eka was the most transparent city. They still had Transparent problems because when survey ended of course people like investigative journalists could find any answer But regular people like myself and you couldn't so we analyze hundreds of pages of content to build a better information architecture and We structured that content into different groups for example news information about the city about the city offices and local government and what is especially important is topics for the citizens and This last topic for the citizens was structured into sections like family culture sports education economy and so on Our idea was to help people find their way through their content so this is what we aim for and We really focus on this that key content so news articles and that sort of information that is here for I would say political reasons so you could see What? See the officials are doing within a day. We're pushed aside to make room for content that interests average citizen So topics for the citizens were being rewritten from a scratch because they didn't have that content before And we did a lot of interviews we interviewed both citizens and other cities So you can see this is a workshop that we held at Croatian Association of cities where we asked other cities to help them Help us solve their problems and special attention was pointed to smaller cities and the smallest cities in Croatia have Barely 10,000 people living in it After that we created personas. We tested user flow We wanted to see how it ever how it all goes on the website one of my favorite personas was young dad that is trying to subscribe his kid into kindergarten and We wanted to see how many steps Does anyone need to come to the topic that interests him? So we optimize a lot during this process. We simply sketched everything on whiteboards. We did a lot of Testing user flows and with that we come to a solution that were That is currently undergoing the final phase of implementation to WordPress and We also built some wireframes and tested even more Because we made changing changes during this process. So remember we started by analyzing content We created information architecture. We did interviews with citizens We did interviews with cities and with all that we changed the content and we changed how things are going and how the things are looking on the website and We wanted to see if we can optimize these small parts of the website as well and these wireframes We shown to the citizens that came to a workshop and we show them that in small groups We explained user flow. We explained how will they get The information they needed they we asked them a lot about what are their problems What do they think lacks on the current website? So this current website is Quite all I think it's eight years old and I will show it in a moment So we got some insight that helped us build better templates based on this interaction Had with the citizens so in our second phase the design phase we were focused on key templates only We didn't design those templates in mobile and tablet version. We designed only desktop version So remember when I said that we wanted to optimize everything We have this budget that we had to work on and working more time cement that we wouldn't get paid for that We were open to making changes at this time as well If we believe that it will help our users So we were open to make any changes Necessary to build a better experience for them and I promised you a current website of the city of rica Website so please I won't say close your eyes. But here it is So this is the current website for the city of rica. It's I think eight years old and as you can see a lot of content is Overflown so we have basically an information Overlog We have two navigations up here and on the left. We have news this that is practically using the Whole home page and we have a lot of banners and this is especially Funny with the banners because every department can just come and say hey add a banner on the home page because Yeah, I think that they had around 50 banners on the home page so We tried to make the change and we tried to simplify everything. So this is our proposed design for the home page You can see that there are a lot of less information there we used Sorry, we use this Slider as well. We are not the fan of the sliders. We don't like it but I think that on some occasions like when you want to promote certain content that is really important for the citizens like what happens when city has a day in a year that's Celebrating or when it's a carnal because rica is well known for that Carnival you want to show that and the most important thing is this big Big navigation pattern on the top so basically this navigation will stick always to the top so you could Come to any part of the website within a click or two clicks and this is something that we are we wanted to do we wanted to create information architecture that will support that and There are only a couple of things on the main menu like What is going on the addresses in the eco then I Don't see it from this So this is a strategy for the city the Parts of the city and topics for the citizens and so on we try to make everything Really easy to see and and watch and we had we added a quick links basically with The ability for for them alone to change that so when our parents will come to the city and in Croatia at the Subscribing to kindergarten process is only in a month in the entire year So when parents will come to that they will get the quick link that will basically guide them to the landing page about Subscribing your kids to kindergarten. We added a couple of more things. So the the news section has bigger images But it has no description. We added important news that are Important for some ways, for example, if you want to help promote your social policies if you want to help people to see what are they're supposed to do and For example, when you build a new house for public housing and so on basically this news will stick there And if you remember the banner part on the old website You you have seen that there is a lot of information overload a lot of colors a lot of different designs so we tried to not allow them to Upload any banner that they want we created a interface that will add a couple of things a couple of Elements that are going to be used throughout the website and on the bottom Of everything it's a sort of site like navigation with all the important things So when people are scrolling to the website when they come to the end of it They want they could go to find another content another page there. So it's really important to to have that as well Second Template we developed around 10 or 15 templates. I'm not sure everything is available on github as well The second template was topics for the citizens. So we have We have Parts of the parts of the topics like like education schools culture sports and so on and It's scrollable basically it's a landing page for the topics and when you click on some topic Then you will get the landing page that is Especially optimized to get all the relevant information for the citizens. So this is an example from the taxes and taxes of the city Land page for this sort of topics and if you scroll down a bit further, you will see that all the information there is somehow I don't know how to say that properly, but it's Optimized for better readability and so the people can could actually see what's really important for them in our HTML phase We said everything should be responsive, of course, we are designing responsive websites for I think past six years But we were not focusing on devices. We didn't design Responsive responsive breakpoints for devices like iPhone iPad Android tablets and so on we designed for the resolution So at some points we added breakpoints and if we see that content is not Delivering relevant on certain resolutions. We had a break point as well. So we could change these small parts of the website Everything is still open for change if it benefits our users on the warpers part of the Design process we use the standard warpers administration as a starting point The main reason for that is they know how to use it. They have websites that are running warpers The second thing is that we want to optimize it. So make it easier to use for them for their users and To make it error proof. So we remove elements from the administration What we think that they're not necessary to have it in the in the administration interface We are using advanced custom fields to create sort of experience that is basically guiding the administration users how to upload content how to make it more legible and so on and We interconnected a lot of content with custom post types and tags. So for example on the past website if you want to change something like the address or If someone changes, it's his or hers job position You had to do it in a really painful way, but we are creating an address book We are creating a sort of interconnection between the address book the workplace between the department And with using tags, we try to make everything as easy as possible So let's say that there is a news editor that wants to end the news about the session of the City council it simply adds a news with a tag and it shows up on the city council page as well So this is really important if you want to have a transparent government and we were focused on transparency information as well so budget representative contents and so on and in the in the example of representatives We are adding a functionality. So we could see how is the representative we reacting to different questions so representatives could ask question the mayor could ask questions for the departments and we are showing the citizens what is his personality because citizens now can see what are these questions and what sort of What what sort of commitment the representative has and this finally Works really good when you try to reelect Those representatives we faced quite a few problems So the first one was we got paid Less than we usually had for similar projects This is around two and five Times or even three times less than for for similar projects and we had a lot of unexpected setbacks For example, we plan for analysis Faced last a week we worked on that almost three weeks So you can see that we didn't get paid for for two weeks of work It was a lot more work than expected we created blog posts in that process we Realized that we could add some extra benefit like creating content strategy guidelines and accessibility guidelines and these strategic documents Is something that is Really important because there were no that sort of documents in Croatia before that and What are the benefits? except that we added value with these documents like content strategy built the guidelines and designing design blog What person are more recognized than it was ever before people see that they can build something extraordinary and amazing with WordPress and We talked in this work, and I talked with a couple of people and if you come from Less developed country then you have problems understanding that WordPress is not only a blogging platform and since everything will be open sourced This is substantial benefit for the country Citizens were involved and what is more important. They were listened we really asked them questions and we were prepared to listen to listen then to listen to their answers and to make changes accordingly and One of the benefits was this this is that an educational conference that we held in the city hall of Rijeka, which aimed the employees of the city We just asked we we saw the opportunity to create a one-day half-day conference so we asked professionals from the copywriting industry SEO industry Social media industry and we even asked a guy that comes from the association of blind people of Croatia so they explained what are the Important things that you have to do when Creating content for the web so copywriting guy Talked about that SEO guys talked about it and so on and so on and it was a really important to do that because employees of the city now Has better understanding of all that and above all that we film we've videoed everything and it's available online for the other cities as well and one of the benefits is This we organized working Croatia our first working Croatia last year in Rijeka we have four meetups in four different cities and Rijeka meet up was only one of them, but the city of Rijeka was really eager to help the WordPress community so they were involved with How we managed to organize everything they gave us the venue for free. They gave us a lot of support They gave us access to local media so we organized a really cool working for around 170 people That were really happy after after all that so Let's try to conclude this We all have our own comfort zones Politicians have their comfort zones as well, but I think that they should leave their comfort zones if they want to make a better future So when we elect them, I think we elect them for for this reason we want to for them to give us a better future and a couple of people asked me Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this the way we are doing it? So I say that we should seize the opportunity We should leave if we can and we shouldn't expect someone else to leave and this is sort of a project if you remember from before that is Maybe once in a lifetime. I don't know but this is an opportunity that I didn't want to miss and we as a team didn't want to miss that because when you think of yourself as a designer designers you think of Changing the world so what can be a better place and one day? I just want to sit in front of the mirror and I want to See myself that I did everything I could So I could look my son in the eye and just Tell him that his dad did everything to build him a better future So thank you, and I know that we are this is the last session and we want to go Away Okay, I will speak slowly Thanks a lot first of all Just got a tiny little present and almost full the rate. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks So The question was I think I should repeat it for the camera So the question was how we were chosen to do that. So there's a history lesson I started working with workers 10 years ago. I was really recognized in the community that wasn't a community until three years ago and We started talking with Jekka. I think Two three four years. I don't remember anymore and the problem was what I said about public bid situation. So we didn't want to do anything that is not transparent and We said that if it has to go to public bid and we will definitely apply but they have to find a way to choose Whoever they want. So if they want to go with the lowest economic lowest lowest price It's okay with us. We don't we didn't want to work that way and since this offer was above So below public bid threshold, we couldn't we could say that The mayor could decide for themselves and sign these documents So the mayor said we want to work with these guys because it's really important to do so for this reason that I mentioned in the in the Presentation so we did everything open source at that point we Sat with them and we said hey if we want to do this, right? We want everything open source. We want to design to design in the open We want to document everything and because of all that We added this extra value and it wasn't that big of a deal because we didn't get what we usually get paid because We seize this opportunity. So No, there was no public bid because it was the below public bid threshold. So our The question was what are the plans for the future of the project since This young fellow has the same problems in Slovakia as well. Just kidding. So the plans is That we will open source everything. So we open source design already We are in the last phase of doing the HTML part and work as part and we are combining that That's two together. So we could lower actually the cost of everything and we will open source the HTML templates the WordPress team and this will all go in English and language. So it could be adopted basically anywhere with a similar Similar system. So we are aiming not only to cover Croatian cities we are aiming to cover the cities in other countries as well because Today when you are building a city for a website for a city then this is a substantial cost and We in Croatia alone have around 130 cities and I think that half of them Don't have the budget to create something like that and with that we would give them everything for free and In that way, maybe a local workers agency and we don't want to work on that anymore The local workers agency can come can create a design and use the workers team so they can build a better website for their city as well, so this is the benefits and I Think that it could be used in Slovakia as well. I was last week on working upon them And I talked with a lady from Bulgaria with the same problems So I suppose that this could make Better democratic principles in other countries as well. Thank you