Use cases

To be added is a activity diagram of user behaviour in the unified modeling language based on these use cases.

Signing a petition

The most common use case is the one of a user signing a petition.

User finds petition

• user gets direct link to the shared link (mostly by e-mail, mentioned in the news, through social media, or a web search)
• heard about the petition, but does not know the exact name or link (most likely to first use web search)
• a minority of users lands on the home page first and browses or searches to find petition (the list of active, new or big will bring most to the petition they look for)
• some users do not look for a petition, but are issue driven. After a web search on the issue they end up on a petition page about the issue
• some users are searching the web for something unrelated (like the name of a signatory) and are distracted by the petition, some of those even sign

User signs petition

• once on the petition page, user reads the introduction on top (summary of what the petition is about)
• scrolls through the petition text and reads/scans it a bit (formal wording, in order to be taken serious and understood well by recipient of petition)
• request to sign follows the user while scrolling down, it asks (only) for name, place and residence and e-mail address
• as input in the form an e-mail address is required, the name field should receive at least a character, a space and a character as input
• to appear publicly on the web as signatory for this petition an opt-in checkbox needs to be validated
• the user signs by clicking ‘yes, I sign this petition’
• immediately an error message appears (page does not reload) above that same button to sign the petition if there is anything wrong with the input, instructing what to fix. The problematic input fields get a thick red box around them, in small print it says in detail what is the problem for each field. A user can not sign one petition twice with the same e-mail address. But the error message can not be used to check up on people to see if they have signed (privacy!).
• if there are no errors in the input the button disappears and a ‘checked’ icon appears with a thank you message; "Thank you, your signature only needs your confirmation. On $e-mailaddress$ you receive an e-mail from info@petities.nl with Please confirm in the subject line. Otherwise, just sign again."
• User goes to mailclient or opens webbrowser for webmail and looks for the message.
• Below the Thank you it also says: "Also check your spam mailbox if you can not find it. Without confirmation your signature does not count.” Also when the address has already been used to sign, the message appears. An explicit suggestion to consult the help section, ‘More help’ ends the sentence. Sending e-mails to those who already signed is a bit tricky, because our system should not allow abuse. A stalker can be really annoying like this. Each e-mail that is sent should therefore have an opt-out, for either the particular petition or all e-mails from petities.nl.

User confirms petition

• In the e-mail a button appears that only needs to be clicked on. Below the button also the actual link is mentioned for copy pasting in the address bar.
• User clicks on button or the link below it.
• The link without the code or an incomplete, corrupted should give a page where the totally clueless can paste or type the link. Especially civil servants and bank employees have problems clicking on a link, their system does not allow them to prevent trojan horses.
• On the confirmation page more information is asked. Some is required, depending on the type of petition. The confirmation page is basically the ‘start a petition’ page, just different fields. Instead of ’Start a petition’ it says ‘Confirm your signature for petition ‘$namepetition$'. On the left are the input fields, on the right is the explanation about each input field. Next to the field ‘place of residence’ a box might appear asking if they would like to get invited by the city to participate more and in other ways. This appears only if the city signed a contract/subscription for this service with us. If so, below the input field ‘place of residence’ a check box appears for ‘Yes, let $City$ invite me’.
• Above ‘the fold’ (without scrolling) the user already sees a button ‘confirm my signature’, but this will lead in most cases to the same button below all the information to confirm, but with an error message about certain required fields. This is to avoid that people miss the confirm button because they do not scroll down. Petitions that do not ask for any more information than just a name are confirmed by just following the link (after all, we got all we need already). The page still appears, but the buttons appear as ‘update my data’ and on top of the page the tekst ‘Confirm your signature for petition ‘$namepetition$' is replaced with 'Thank you $namepetitioner$ for confirming your signature for petition ‘$namepetition$'
• Below the lowest ‘Confirm my signature’ button there is an info box, just like the one with info for a petition. A quick summary with: date and time of signature and e-mail address (with the words ‘more information’ and then ip-address, computer os, browser, etc are displayed.)

User invites to sign and shares signature

• Once confirmed, then below the summary of the signature data in this box an extra line appears with date and time of confirmation (and ‘more information’). Below that also ‘Last updated on’ appears, as the two above.
• In a future release the e-mail address can be changed here, by clicking on a word 'change' after the displayed e-mail addres. Then the e-mailaddress can be changed. A new confirmation link is sent and the address of this confirmation page changes, but the old address still appears as the one the signature is confirmed with (in case the link to the page ends up in other hands).
• If newsletters are sent to the signatory an extra line appears with "x out of 3 newsletters received: date and time, date and time, date and time. Currently subscribed/unsubscribed." (in a future release each date will be clickable, leading to the newsletter).
• Below the details of the signature and confirmation data there are ways to invite others to also sign. A box appears with a default invitation text (only when confirmed!). It can be altered, copy-pasted or e-mailed by inserting e-mail addresses (or uploading an address book or any file with text in it). As default addressee of this invite the e-mail address of the signatory him/herself is shown with a checkbox after it.
• User invites others to sign by uploading some file which is then scanned for strings that look like an e-mail address. These appear in a row, with checked checkboxes after each one, above the box with the invitation text. Just like what already showed with just the address of the signatory, but then more addresses. Max 100 per batch.
• Users unchecks the addresses that should not get an invite.
• Users clicks the button 'Send invitation' and receives an e-mail listing the e-mail addresses that have received an invite. Explaining that the user can upload this e-mail in the future when inviting (again) (for another petition). In the e-mail is a suggestion they should save it as text.
• Below the e-mail invite options there are the usual sharing options. It is important they share not the location of this confirmation page, but the address of the petition. Important that one can only e-mail invites after confirming, otherwise our system might be abused by spammers.
• The signatory can look up their position in the list of signatures, it has a link. Each page of signatures has 100 signatures (to remain consistent with the legacy links of the current lists) and also each page has a unique link. If signatures are deleted the number of signatures on that page just gets less, the page numbering does not change.
• The link to the specific signature in the list of signatures can be shared from the signature in the list (there is a little icon called 'link' for that), but also from the invite part of the confirmation page. Inside the default e-mail message a link to the signature is suggested and in the ‘details’ of the signature on the confirmation page is given.
• This link will be shared on social media using the buttons on the confirmation page since right next to the list of signatures there is a link to signing the petition. When someone shares this link on Facebook there should be a preview of the list of signatures with the icon image of the petition as teaser.

At any of these stages the user might need help or want information about what the site is about, who is behind it etc. Can be found in the footer.

starting a petition

• a user comes to our website directly (having signed a petition there once) or after a websearch about starting a petition
• landing on the homepage after search or directly going there, there is a big button 'start a petition'
• a small number of users get inspired while they are on the website (perhaps a link in the footer should be included)