
Collaborating with volunteers to focus system improvements
This is ‘how to use digital tools to support collaboration’ guide was produced as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage’s Connected Heritage programme.
1. Project background
Butterfly Conservation is the UK charity dedicated to saving butterflies, moths and our natural environment. Founded in 1968, we are a leading authority on the conservation of these beautiful creatures – key indicators of a healthy ecosystem– and we have achieved numerous successes for them locally, nationally and internationally.
Time is running out for our butterflies and moths; half of the UK’s butterflies are now listed as endangered and larger moths have declined in abundance by 33% since 1968. To understand and address this, the science and conservation of the UK’s butterflies and moths depends on data gathered by over 100,000 recorders and the verification of these data by around 200 County Recorder volunteers with ecological expertise.
But with an increasing amount of data year-on-year, digital systems and volunteer roles are under strain. So our project focused on supporting the UK’s evidence base of digitised butterfly and moth observations by improving systems and the volunteering experience.
2. Users and needs
Prioritising users and their needs
We needed to develop features in an existing system (iRecord) used by volunteers (expert data verifiers) to make it better for their process and our goals.
We wanted to make the changes work for users with a range of experience, to tackle existing barriers to use and encourage new users. This needed insights from real user processes and experiences of interacting with the system.
We therefore took a user research approach, working with the existing volunteers, the system owner and developer (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH)) and user research consultant (Tech Works For Us).
Users of the digital system we were developing are based around the UK and volunteer in their own time. Therefore online collaboration over video calls where screens could be shared was selected to enable participation from across the regions and at preferred times. This facilitated our user researcher to witness first hand the users’ processes, using their own equipment. Online video calls also facilitated recording of the sessions so that these could be replayed by the user researcher to refine notes subsequently.
Who to involve in user research
Working with an independent consultant brought advantages to our project. We worked with a professional user researcher to bring appropriate experience and methods to the project team that we did not have. This third-party approach also helped to keep discussions open and avoided bias as we are a stakeholder in the system.
Deciding which stakeholders to involve in the user research is an important step, considering what experience or demographics needs to be included and structuring the interview group accordingly.
We decided that it was important for our project to include technically confident volunteers, system super-users and those less confident with technology or the system in our user research. We also represented both lead volunteers (County Recorders) and support team volunteers (Verification Assistants).
Conducting the user research
Some projects have a pre-existing body of evidence based on institutional knowledge, surveys and informally gathered opinion. Our consultant began with a review of the existing evidence to steer a research framework, which was agreed with the project team. This identifies the priority questions to address in the interview stage.
Users were interviewed via online video call, which enabled participation from across the UK and at flexible times to fit volunteers’ availability.
Once results were written up and key themes emerged, we called upon an existing group of volunteers with an interest in the project to ‘sense check’ results and highlight any missing aspects. This step brought confidence to our conclusions before we started the technical development.
3. Digital technology and tools
We used the following technologies to achieve our collaboration
- Google Documents and sheets – free to use, familiar, ease of sharing for team collaboration;
- Google Forms – for capturing standardised answers from the volunteer community, easy to set up and include notices such as privacy details, free to use
- SmartSurvey forms – for capturing standardised answers from the volunteer community, easy to set up and include notices such as privacy details, subscription required so may be a good option if used by the organisation
- Microsoft Excel spreadsheets – powerful, familiar tool for organising data, subscription required;
- Zoom (interviews/meetings) – familiar for most online users, variety of hosting tools, free to use;
- Mural board – visual aid for collaborating on emerging ideas, sticky-note approach useful for ordering comments and thoughts, multiple users can collaborate simultaneously, free to use with pricing plans also available;
- Microsoft PowerPoint – powerful and familiar tool for presenting during online meetings, subscription required;
- Yammer forum – forum space we use to communicate with volunteers, not used by all however so emails also required.
- GitHub – project management tool for developers, open and ideal for listing and monitoring tasks once these are defined, free to use
4. Project stages
Review existing evidence
- If you have been working with the user group for a long time you probably have good evidence and institutional knowledge already. Compile comments into a single spreadsheet and group into themes if possible.
- A User Researcher consultant can review this evidence and talk with key staff to establish a baseline of what is known, not known or assumed already.
Design a Research Framework
- Your User Researcher will collaboratively design a Research Framework based on the existing baseline and with input from the project team. A shared document such as Google Docs is useful.
Carry out first phase of user research
- With a known user community it may be important for your project to include a cross-section of participants in your research, or target particular user types. We asked for expressions of interest via an online form, which also collected a few extra details so we could check the sample group were reasonably balanced in regional location, gender and specialism.
- Interviews will be carried out by your User Researcher and include open questions from the Research Framework and a screen-share of the volunteer’s system process. Notes from these interviews are collated and themes are extracted by the User Researcher.
- We found it useful to Learning sense check conclusions in a workshop with staff, delivery partners and volunteers.
Test your development
- New or adapted features need to be tested with volunteer users. Your User Researcher will again observe and discuss how users interact with the new features and pool together the findings. On discussion with the project team and developer changes can then be made in response.
What were the wider outcomes?
- Working with specialist consultants brings new skills and techniques into a heritage organisation and focuses staff and developer time on their strengths.
- Collaborating on user research gives participants the opportunity to shape the tools that they and their peers can benefit from. It brings a diversity of experience and voices to the process.
- Making the system work best from the user-perspective improves work flow and enjoyment of the role, ultimately benefiting the digital heritage activity.
5. Key learnings
Data protection
Remember personal data protection when asking users to fill in forms or participate in interviews.
Consent
Remember to get consent for recording video meetings or interviews and provide opt out.
Communication
Keeping the wider community informed of the process can be challenging when you are working in an agile way as development is explorative, phased and responsive not specifically defined at the start. But keep in touch approximately monthly and remind of the overall aims.
6. Key challenges
There is a risk that your user research doesn’t include a full range of experiences or needs. You can minimise this by trying to stratify your sample and being flexible with times.

Please attribute as: "Collaborating with volunteers to focus system improvements (2023) by Butterfly Conservation supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0