I-CoDI Supports the UX Design of New AI Powered ITU Knowledge Platform

Geneva, 10 November – I-CoDI in partnership with the Digital Knowledge Hub Team organized two co-creation workshops in November to shape the design of ITU’s new online Digital Knowledge Platform.  27 ITU-D Members of the ITU Telecommunication Development Sector representing governments, academia, and regional organizations, and member states and ITU staff members  participated in the various sessions.

The Digital Knowledge Hub Team aims to establish the ITU Digital Knowledge Platform (DKP) as an easy and automatically curated online knowledge management platform that provides insightful access for ITU Members and ITU staff to non-public ITU knowledge products.  The platform, once completed, will be powered via cognitive search solutions that leverage data science and AI-technology, as appropriate, to improve the overall user –experience and knowledge creation.  This is geared to supporting ITU Members and staff members with data-driven and knowledge-based policy and decision-making tools. 

To gain a better understanding of membership usage and include their insights and ideas into the development roadmap, the Digital Knowledge Hub Team requested I-CoDI to design and facilitate two hybrid workshops, both in-person and virtual, to gather evidence on the user journey and the needed functionalities to further align the roadmap with user needs. 

Understanding the Challenge

The alignment of ITU activities, as well as understanding the needs of users was the first step in designing workshops to support the Digital Knowledge Platform roadmap. The overlapping goals were: 1) to align at a strategic level the technical and organizational synergies for a more effective deployment of the DKP as well as related products; 2) understand membership needs to deliver an impactful product for their data and decision-making needs; and finally, 3) explore potential user journeys to deliver actionable and powerful user experience suggestions. 

To achieve these goals and deliver an impactful product I-CoDI designed the interactive workshops with the following aims in mind:

  • Help understand the knowledge management needs and challenges of ITU-D Members and staff 
  • Engage members and ITU-staff in the creation of ideas on the functionalities of the platform focusing on user personas and user journeys and enhance the roadmap. 
  • Help prioritize solution components for short, medium, and long-term horizons, and facilitate integration with other platforms.

Over two days participants discussed how best to create a user-centric and integrated Digital Knowledge Platform by leveraging ITU initiatives and expertise.  The various sessions of the workshops created a safe space for participants to honestly and constructively: 

  • Share personal challenges and hoped for functionalities that they and their stakeholders expect. 
  • Provide feedback on the proposed taxonomy/classification of topics. 
  • Shape user-interface features. 
  • Help understand the user journey and experience for a more impactful solution. 

Understanding the Current State

The first days of the workshops were dedicated to understanding the current state of knowledge management within the organization. 

A first session gave the participants an opportunity to create lists, in small groups, of the types of tools and resources they currently use to access knowledge products within the Organization.

From there they built on those lists and discussed the challenges and opportunities of sharing, creating, and searching for knowledge products within the Organization.  

Their discussions also explored the gaps and strengths of existing initiatives.  They also shared and thought through the biggest opportunities.

The first day’s final session gave the opportunity to participants to create their own user personas.  These personas, within the design thinking process, help participants to imagine real users and define, create, and ideate solutions for these imaginary people.

Designing Knowledge Platform UX

On the second day, designing functionality for the digital knowledge platform took center stage.  A short presentation on the functionalities the Digital Knowledge Hub Team were considering served as the introduction to the first breakout session on ideating solutions and prioritizing functionality.

Both ITU staff and ITU-D members identified, for example, analytics, help & chatbot, easy-to-use interface, semantic search engine, navigation, taxonomy & classification, filtering, and tutorial /guided tour as key desired features.

To end the day discussions then moved towards the desired taxonomy and classification systems for the future platform.   Most of the participants preferred to have one system for classification across the organization, that linked directly to the Organization’s strategic. 

The workshops were organized as part of the validation process of the Digital Knowledge Platform Roadmap project and undertaken with the generous support of the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICTs (MSIT).

To work with I-CoDI, contact us.