Thinking of supporting Dine Safe? 

Consider contributing $5 or $15, the cost of a fancy mocha or a take out meal.

What Works for King County Residents?

All over the USA and across the world, health departments require restaurants to post their restaurant inspection scores. These scores give consumers like you and I a window into the restaurant's compliance with health and sanitation codes. Useful information to know when you're picking a place to go out. So, yay for King County Public Health committing to posting restaurant inspection scores at King County restaurants, starting in mid-2015!

But what types of "inspection signs" work well? There's lots of different designs used around the world, and there's debate about how well each of them work.  King County has had committees with restaurants and government leaders discussing design options. --Wouldn't it be great to test these sign designs out in King County, on residents, BEFORE the signs roll out? 

We think so. That's why we're doing usability testing on various inspection score designs with a diverse pool of King County residents as testers. We're starting testing now, so our results can be presented in a time for King County's decision-making process on what types of signage to implement. They haven't told us exact dates, but it looks like late winter (in late January/early February) the'll come to a decision. We're going to complete the study before then, and we need your help to do it.

Who We Are

• A group of five graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Washington, most of us are in UW's Human Centered Design program.
• Our group was put together (and fundraised) by Sarah Schacht, the open government expert and E. Coli survivor who ran a successful Change.org petition to implement posted restaurant inspection scores in King County. Sarah served as the only member of the public on the committees designing the inspection signs and noticed that more public voices and testing were needed in the process.
• Professors from WSU and UW, who are mentoring the students in the research process, from topics on government transparency to epidemiology, to test design and reporting.

We're Fundraising for Basic Research Costs, Everything Else is Covered

• $75 for poster printing, to advertise to diverse locations/populations to participate in our usability sessions.
• $500 (broken up into smaller gift cards) for focus group gratuities, which incentivize people to show up, spend an hour of their time with us. Provides for 10 to 12 testers.
• $200, for online survey incentive prizes, to get dozens of testers incentivized to take our surveys, and be entered to win one of four gift cards.
• $200, to provide in $5 gift cards as incentives when we do interaction testing on the streets of King County's towns and cities. Gets people to talk with us for 5-10 minutes and participate in quick testing.
• $150, transportation costs, to locations in King County that are not well served by transit. 
• $150 for technology rental for testing equipment to on site locations. 
• $50, office supplies.
• $100 for presentation materials, hard copy reports for governments that request them.
• $150 for tabling supplies for being out at community engagement events.
• $175, to cover fundraising/transaction fees, like PayPal and Indigogo.

The Impact

Products and information work better when they've been through user testing first. The impact of this research is to give King County Public Health and King County Board of Health design recommendations which demonstrate how inspection score design impacts citizen choices of restaurants, and how they make those choices. Some additional impacts we think the study can make:

• Provide the public and decision-makers with a well-researched report, helping them advocate and decide with the public's needs in mind.
• Allow stakeholders like restaurants insights into how posted scores may impact consumer behavior.
• Kickstart conversations in King County about how we can design information and services with the public in mind.
• Save King County taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars by making this an independent, volunteer-run research study, without them having to hire expensive contractors.
• Help King County launch a well-tested and works-well-for-the-public posted inspection score system.

Risks & Challenges

Our research project is run by student volunteers, with that comes risks and challenges. Here's a couple we could encounter:

• A student volunteer could get sick or face a challenge, and we'd need to rework the schedule and staffing, leading to longer study length.
• King County could decide it doesn't want to take our study into account. However, though they have said they are interested and would look at our results.
• Act-of-God/hit-by-bus sort of delays which could delay the release of the study.

Thanks!

Your support means a lot to us! You helping create a safer county to eat out in, and helping King County create a model for restaurant inspection transparency the rest of the state and our nation can follow. 

Can't donate today? Help us get the word out about our crowdfunding campaign! 

• Share this campaign through social media, email, and tell friends about it!
• Use Indiegogo's social media tools to share the campaign and encourage others to join.