It’s all about the people: please meet the CGIAR Ongoing Research Map focal points

This week during the AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair in Addis, a quite secretive group of people was wandering around the ILRI Campus. While at the Fair everything was open to all and people could walk around and participate in learning pathways, focus groups and lively sessions, what was a small group of 10 doing locked up in the Computer Lab?

In true Share Fair spirit, we were doing just a bit more knowledge sharing, only in its software development flavour: user-centred design, a design methodology that aims to incorporate analysis of the needs, constraints and priorities of end users at different stages of the software development process (read a concise overview on Wikipedia).

The focus of our attention was the CGIAR Ongoing Research Map, now in beta and in the process of being extensively redesigned.

The CGIAR Ongoing Research Map has emerged from a prototype based on a mashup of data management technologies, then released as a Beta version last January. Since then, new requirements have been collected through direct feedback from Map users and through Evelyn Katingi, the Map coordinator at the CGIAR Collective Action to whom we owe much for the relentless efforts she spends in weaving relationships, promoting the Map, collecting feedback.

Read the full post on the ICT-KM blog