Making room for work that serves a public purpose

Applications are closed. The program is being developed; applications are not open.

A form asks someone to describe their circumstances. A dashboard turns a week's work into a few numbers. An application portal decides which questions can be answered in a sentence and which have to fit a checkbox. Before anyone reads a submission, somebody has already made decisions about what can be said.

Those decisions are part of the work of building websites and software. They are also part of why we want to build them.

We're developing a pro bono program at Plant Powered Pixels for websites and tools that serve a public purpose. We want to make room for projects whose usefulness is clear even when the resources to commission them are limited. A public website might be the right project. So might a small application that makes an organization's daily work easier.

The program will invite projects that need that work.

What the software asks of people

Consider a hypothetical intake form that requires a permanent address. For someone without one, an ordinary field becomes an obstacle to completing the form. Making the field optional changes what the system permits. Explaining why the address is being requested changes what the person understands about it. Whether the organization actually needs that information is a question to settle before choosing the field.

The decision continues underneath the page. A database might require an address even when the form doesn't. A report might silently exclude records with that field empty. Fixing the visible form means checking where the information goes and what depends on it.

This is one reason we're interested in the systems behind a website. We want to understand what people are being asked to do. When their situation doesn't fit, we ask who takes on the extra work of resolving it.

The choices inside a tool

A reviewer portal needs rules about who can see an application and who can change a score. Those rules become permissions enforced by the server. Hiding a button in the interface doesn't prevent an unauthorized request from changing a record; the permission has to hold where the request is processed.

A record of changes introduces another set of choices. Recording who changed a decision and when can make a review process easier to account for. Deciding what to record, who may read it, and how long to retain it requires care too. A log can contain information about people who never see it.

Dashboards require similar judgment. A count of completed applications tells you how many submissions arrived. On its own, it tells you little about who started and couldn't finish, or who never reached the form. An empty field and a zero can mean different things. Combining them makes a cleaner chart at the cost of losing the distinction.

These are technical decisions with consequences for the work around them. They are worth discussing with the people who will use and maintain the system.

Making room for this work

Our interest comes from work in public health and organizing. Lincoln builds websites and applications in his role at UCLA. We also built the public site and organizing tools for the union we organize with, WeHo Temps United. Those are different relationships, and we describe them as such in our portfolio.

They have helped clarify what we want to make room for at the studio. We care about whether people can find and use information. A process should give them a way to participate, and the people running it should be able to keep it going. Accessibility belongs in those decisions, alongside the way information is organized and access to it is controlled.

The pro bono program will give us a way to invite more of that work. We don't expect an applicant to arrive with a technical specification. Tell us what you're trying to accomplish, who would use the website or tool, and what is difficult with the arrangements you have now.

We donate the design and build for an agreed project. Hosting is a small monthly cost that depends on what we make. We explain the amount, what it includes, and any separate expenses before you commit. Participation also includes permission to feature the finished work in an agreed public case study, with private records kept out of view.

Applications are closed while we settle the program terms. Read about the program to see what we are considering.

Read about the pro bono program