Fellowship Digital Services: Beta Phase Sprint Notes 3

In our most recent Sprint we hosted the first Show and Ask that focused on discussing the private Beta. This session engaged 45 Fellows within the UK and included a demonstration of the Circle platform.

A reminder of the project's focus: this beta project is focused on enhancing existing and implementing a new technology at the RSA called Circle, to help improve how Fellows engage and contribute to the RSA work and collaborate with other Fellows.

For further detail see Beta Phase Sprint Notes 1-2

What happened in Sprint 3?

There are four Sprints leading up to the RSA’s Fellows Festival on 14 May 2022. During the Festival, we will present the project and our Private Beta plans as well as deliver a demo of Circle to a larger group of Fellows.

At the Festival, we will also give Fellows an opportunity to register their interest in taking part in the testing. After the Festival, we will select a diverse group of Fellows to test the service and help iterate it during the private beta. This is because we want to ensure we test the service effectively with an appropriate group of Fellows, in terms of both the size of the group and diversity.

This decision reverted our priorities to the initial goal and required us to pivot the plans slightly during Sprint 3. In addition to iterating the plans, we focused most of Sprint 3 on preparing the Circle for the first Show & Ask to test with a smaller group of Fellows engaged from the Alpha phase. This helped us collect valuable feedback on various aspects of the service to tweak them in advance of the demo at the Festival.

Service design and testing before the Fellows’ Festival

During Sprint 3, we worked on two main types of priorities - designing and setting up the service and engagement with the Fellows. Below is a brief outline of key activities we have worked on for both.

Design and set up

• Shaping the beta journey
• Setting up, designing, and testing Circle Aligning Circle to RSA's brand guidelines
• Co-creation of Fellow spaces (naming the service and set up of spaces)
• Discussing content needs – migration of existing and creation of latest content
• Developing MVP version of community guidelines, to ensure Circle is a safe and inclusive space for Fellows to engage in
• Defining internal process for Fellow's support and moderation in Circle 

Fellow's engagement

• Planning engagement with Fellows for initial testing
• Designing and managing invitations for initial testing with Fellows
• Enabling Fellows to log into Circle
• Delivering first show & Ask on 28th April to demo Circle and get feedback from Fellows on initial sign on and Circle set up
• Setting up a process to collect feedback from Fellows

Planning Private Beta

We have now drafted and reviewed the user journey for Fellows who will take part in the Private Beta testing programme after the Fellows Festival, as well as the smaller group of users who are now participating in testing prior to the festival.

We are aware that so far, we have mostly focused on one part of the three main parts of the services - Explore your RSA, Fellow Spaces and Invites to Engage. As we progress our planning for private beta and support the beta phase delivery, we will focus on all three parts of the service now that the Circle is mostly set up.

Next Steps

During the next two weeks, we will draft, discuss, and seek approval for the Private Beta testing and user engagement plans. We will also focus on preparing for presenting the plans and delivering a demo at the Fellows Festival. This includes various components, from incorporating feedback from the smaller group of Fellows already testing Circle, through content design, to support offered to Fellows. In parallel, we will also continue to simultaneously build and implement the public beta, in preparation to roll-out the new services to all Fellows by the end of September 2022.

If you are a Fellow interested in taking part in the Private Beta Programme, register your interest