Invite Users to Weigh Economic Decisions and Policy Options

Timeline

June - November 2009: Production
Develop editorial calendar
Research and develop content
Create beta site

December 2009: Launch and Test
Initial launch with four published activities

January 2010: Official Launch
Initiate marketing campaign
Continue to publish a total of ten activities

April 2010: Conclusion

Description

A visually reworked You Decide project will focus on a series of economic policy debates and personal decision making, allowing visitors to weigh the pros and cons of different economic options facing the government and individuals. Several adaptations will be made based on lessons learned from user feedback and metrics, as well as to fit the topic. The 2009 You Decide upgrades will be a much more visual presentation including informational graphics which enable the user to weigh the quantitative data that informs economic issues. Still true to the You Decide convention, it will pose provocative questions which compel audiences to respond. Questions might come in the form of "yes" and "no" responses, multiple choice, or questions that ask users to make numeric choices.

The new You Decide will deliver 10 activities each of which will bundle the following:

• A question posed to users (either yes/no or multiple choice)
• A graphic illustrating how many other users answered the same way, what the average guess was, and how many users guessed the correct answer (if appropriate)
• An infographic that provides context for the data
• Brief text explaining different aspects of the question, including pro and con arguments.
  

Syndication
As with the 2008 You Decide, the question will be available as a self-updating widget to stations, other partners and the public. Widgets specific to each unique exercise will also be available in two sizes.  Each full activity will also be available to embed directly on a station's website.  In this new incarnation, the availability of the embeddable widgetw and activities will accommodate a variety of page template designs, such as alongside news stories, a special coverage area or site homepage.

RSS feed to stay updated on any newly published activities:http://feeds.feedburner.com/YouDecide-Economy

Editorial Calendar

You Decide activity modules currently published:

1.    Industry Outlook: "Does your job have a future?"
2.    Stimulus spending: "Is stimulus money for transportation and infrastructure going to the wrong states?"
3.    Debt vs. savings: "Should you spend more money to help boost the economy?"
4.    Job retraining: "Should the federal government pay for laid-off workers to go back to school?"
5.    Home buying: "Does it make economic sense to buy a home right now?"

Other topics currently in research include:

6.    Green energy
7.    Economically motivated geographical migration
8.    Employment cost to employers
9.    Import/export projections
10.    Taxes

If your station has editorial content that overlaps with any of the above topics, or if you have any topic areas that you would like to see covered by You Decide, we would be delighted to collaborate on ideas and share our content.  (See below for contact info.)

There are three ways to feature You Decide on your site.

1.  Embed the auto-update widget

When we publish a new activity, the widget will automatically update to present the new question.  Clicking on the widget will take the user to that activity on the You Decide site.

2.  Embed a widget for a specific activity

We provide widgets for each activity, so you can pick one that corresponds to specific content on your website, blog, Facebook page, etc.

3.  Embed an activity

We also provide (iframe) embed code for you to embed any of our activities directly on your site.  Users of the embedded iframe activity will be prompted to visit the You Decide website version of the activity in order to read/write comments.

Code for embedding the widgets and activities can be found here:

http://uw.kqed.org/youdecide/share.php