StreetShape needs a few real collaborations

Whenever I imagine StreetShape eventually reaching a large audience, I keep coming back to the idea that it should probably begin with something much smaller: a few projects involving organizations that already have a real problem or discussion where StreetShape could be useful.

A cycling organization might want to explain what a proposed bicycle route could look like. A neighborhood group might already be discussing changes to a particular street. A municipality might want a more visual way for residents to submit ideas about one specific location.

Those are the kinds of collaborations I would like to pursue because each one gives the platform something that a broad public launch cannot automatically provide. There is a specific purpose, a defined group of people, and a real situation where the result of using the software actually matters.

That is much more useful to me than simply attracting random users and watching a number on a dashboard increase.

The main thing I would want to understand from these collaborations is where people actually struggle when they use StreetShape. I want to know whether people understand how to create their proposals, whether other people understand what those proposals are trying to communicate, and what happens after somebody publishes a design.

The important question is not only whether somebody can use the editor. I want to know whether StreetShape helps an actual discussion move forward and whether the organization running that discussion can do something useful with the responses it receives.

A real pilot would probably also expose work that has very little to do with the editor itself. People might need an introduction explaining how the platform works, example proposals showing what they can create, support while they are using it, or a clearer process explaining what happens after a submission is made.

Those are difficult things to understand while I am sitting alone and building the product because I already know how everything is supposed to work.

If a few collaborations eventually produce something useful, those examples could also make it easier for other organizations to understand why StreetShape might matter to them. Instead of me trying to explain every possible use case, they could see another municipality, NGO, or local group doing something relevant and think about how they could use the same approach.

I do not know yet whether that would lead to wider adoption, and a few successful pilots obviously would not guarantee that StreetShape becomes a large platform. What they would give me is much stronger evidence about what the product should actually become.

Before I try to make StreetShape useful to everybody, I want to understand what makes it genuinely useful to a few people first.