openaustralia/planningalerts

# PlanningAlerts Design Principles

Through the years of building and improving PlanningAlerts, we've learned the
hard way what works and what doesn't work. We've distilled what we've learned
into these principles.

We hope they can guide you as you design and develop PlanningAlerts.

## The Why

Everything starts with a vision for a society and community where people are empowered
  and involved in decision making at all levels. They feel connected to and able
  to influence the direction that everyone is taking.

## The How

* Do less
* Do small things quickly. Test. Experiment. Iterate.
* Talk to people. Answer your own support email.
* Implement features only that will broadly work in all planning authorities. However, make
  almost everything optional, to deal with real-world differences.
* Design for the process as it should be, not as it is.
* Work hard to simplify the underlying bureaucratic complexity but don't bury it.
* Give people actionable information and don't restrict their actions.
* Design for everyone.
* Assume people are smart and busy. Respect them. Don't talk down
  to them. Value their time.
* Keep your moral compass close. Be guided by your sense of right and wrong, not as much by the
  details of what a law says.
* Any commercial work or work with government needs to align to an existing
  public benefit. We cannot let commercial work take us away from our core
  purpose.
* Design for people, not for the government.
* Make it easy even for "ordinary" people to talk to government, even if
  government isn't ready or open to it.
* Use consistent and simple language.
* Do things to reduce government as an information gatekeeper. Reduce
  government's 'bad' power so they user more 'good' power.
* Maintainability is crucial. This project should last and evolve long into the future.