Innovators Editorial – listen, iterate, measure, June 2020

In my second editorial note I would like to focus on how member feedback is being used to iterate the functionality provided by the DT Hub, improve member experience, and how we are looking to measure whether the functions we are providing are creating value for our members.

Community name  

Based on feedback from our members we have simplified our community name from “Suppliers and Innovators” to simply “Innovators”. This reflects our view that all members of the community are innovators who are developing solutions that enable the vision of the National Digital Twin. You are creating value for owners and operators of built environment assets and delivering social and environmental outcomes. The community name is inclusive, upholding our values and the community culture we wish to nurture.

Supplier Register    

For organisations that supply digital twin solutions commercially, the Supplier Register is a way to showcase solutions through the lens of the Gemini principles information value chain.  

Thank you to our members who have already created entries in the supplier register, and for all the feedback you have provided. We have already made some improvements to the registration process aimed at making it quicker to get submissions approved by the moderation team. We would also welcome further feedback on how we can continue to improve the suppliers register feature.

As we now have several suppliers who have registered, we have made the supplier register visible to the members of our community that own and operate assets in the built environment. The supplier register will continue to grow and evolve over time, now is a great time to register your organisation and showcase your solutions to asset owners and operators.

We will measure the success of the supplier register based on the number of organisation who chose to use it to showcase their solutions, the number of community requested enhancement we are able to implement, and feedback from the asset owner operator community on the value of the register in identifying who does what when it comes to digital twin solutions.  

Community Resources

Based on feedback from our members we have restructured our resources section. You will now see “Core” and “Community” resource categories. Core resources are documents published by the DT Hub team, the wider National Digital Twin programme and the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

Community resources are resources shared by you, our community, for the benefit of the community. We have made these changes to make it easier for you to share resources, and to ensure that community resources can be shared to all members of the DT Hub.

We encourage all members to share resources that they feel are relevant and of value. These may be resources you have already produced or ones you may create specifically for the DT Hub. Resources will be moderated to ensure they comply with our terms of use, but it is for you to decide what content you want to share with the DT Hub community.

We will measure the success of the community resources by the number of resources that are shared by our members, the number of times that resources are downloaded by other members, and then number of discussions that community resources create in our members forums.  

International innovators 

Our original roadmap had a phase for international members later in 2020 once our current communities are established and thriving. In welcoming innovators to the DT Hub at the start of June we may have overlooked those innovators who do not live in the UK but work for multi-national organisations.

This led to colleagues working for the same organisation, some living in the UK and some living elsewhere receiving different responses to their membership requests. This, of course, was not the intention, and based on feedback from the community we have adjusted our membership policy to include innovators working for multi-national organisations. We are rolling out the updates to our membership policy this week, so expect to see your international colleagues on the DT Hub soon!

As a community, we measure success based on the number and quality of discussions taking place across our forums. It is hoped that welcoming international innovators will lead to more and better discussions that enable the development of expertise and the advancement of digital twin usage.

Closing thoughts

I hope providing some tactile examples of how member feedback is driving the iterative cycle of development within the DT Hub, and some of the ways we will be measuring the success (or failure) will encourage you to provide more feedback on what is needed to make the DT Hub a success. I hope the changes we have made in the first month of the innovator community will add value to all members, and that this will stimulate more use, which will lead to more feedback and we can continue to iterate and measure success.   

Tom Hughes

Delivery Lead, DT Hub

30th June 2020