This is part two which highlights the results of the OSM user survey. Read part 1 about demographics and identity and part 2 about the favourite maps
How well-known is MapComplete?
Not that well-known, it seems. In the previous question, 11 people out of 59 who took the time to fill out this question, mistook MapComplete for StreetComplete. This is a clear sign that there is still some work to do.
How did people get to know MapComplete?
How did people get to know MapComplete in the first place?
Via Reddit (13 mentions), Twitter and Mastodon (13 mentions) and the Weekly OSM (9 mentions).
There are honorouble mentions for online chatrooms (6 mentions), word of mouth (6 mentions), the OSM-forum (3 mentions) or ‘arriving via a specific map’ (3 mentions).
From these results, it’s clear that the online spaces where I regularly pitch MapComplete (namely Reddit and Mastodon) also resulted in some people discovering MapComplete.
However, this makes me wonder how applications such as StreetComplete and EveryDoor got to such a big userbase quickly. It seems that creating a mobile phone app with offline capabilities helps with this.
Good questions to ask next year?
I’m planning on doing a similar survey next year (or in one year and a half) to see how things evolve. To be able to compare results, it is interesting to have the same questions, even though some improvements can probably be made (e.g. in wording and more nuanced options).
It is also hard to gauge if people are part of a marginalized group. As such, it is hard to know if we reach those people as well.
But there might be room for other good questions. If you have suggestions, feel free to let them know
Anything else you’d like to say?
This was the question with the most uplifting answers, as many, many people wrote in a compliment about how much they like MapComplete and the work I did! (Well, some of them were probably thinking about StreetComplete)
Thank you everyone involved!
Conclusions
To wrap it up:
- OpenStreetMap is a very male-dominated community
- People use MapComplete because it fits their activities and hobbies, it helps them professionally, as activists, to help other people or for daily issues
- There are many different needs and wants in the community
- MapComplete is not well-known yet, we should consider different branding and communicate more
- The community would like a custom theme builder and offline capabilities (e.g. as an app)
That’s it! I definitively learned much thanks to this survey, hopefully you did learn something as well.
And as usual, feel free to follow my mastodon or the MapComplete Mastodon for more updates.