We’ve just released the latest version of our Fixometer software – our tool for capturing data on repairs at our community events, and for reporting on the positive impacts of community repair.
The Fixometer helps local groups track their impact, and helps us gain a shared view of our collective impact as Restart Parties and community repair events spread. But the database will also give us insights into the barriers to repair, and what we must change together. You can read more about it here.
Based on extensive and helpful input from Fixometer users from Oslo to Hackney to Buenos Aires, the latest release v3.0 (codenamed “Commutator” – find out more about its namesake on our wiki) brings with it a number of new features and improvements.
Improvements for event hosts
Based on your feedback we’ve added some helpful new features for hosts, who announce events and enter data on behalf of their local group. For example:
- the ability to embed Restart Party and group statistics in the group’s own website
- inline help and guidance on what information to include when entering data
- a simplified process for geolocating and naming parties
- a dedicated website field that links to the group’s own website (no longer needs to be added in to the description)
- and making it simpler to save devices as you go along when adding the devices seen at a Restart Party.
An example of how the embedded stats could look like for your group:
You can find more screenshots and a detailed description of changes for the new features over at our Github repo.
Multi-language support
Although we started in London, we now have amazing Restarter groups in countries around the world. To help make it easier to use the Fixometer for our international groups, we have internationalised the Fixometer codebase – that is, we’ve put the infrastructure in place for supporting multiple languages.
Now we need your help in translating it! If you would like to help us translate it to your language, please get in touch at [email protected].
Support for the latest Open Repair Data Standard
As part of our work with other members of the Open Repair Alliance, we’ve learned that knowing the age of devices seen at events will help drive advocacy work when speaking to manufacturers and policy-makers. The year of manufacture is part of the latest Open Repair Data Standard, with which we’re improving consistency in data collection across community repair organisers. As such we’ve added a new field to the Fixometer to record the age of a device.
Help us drive future development
As always we really welcome your feedback on what would help simplify and improve your use of the Fixometer. There was a lot of enthusiasm at Fixfest around the Fixometer, and we’re really keen to get more people involved in shaping its development. You can log an issue at Github or drop us an email at [email protected] if you’d like to get involved.
In upcoming releases we’re looking at further improving the experience of using the app, and we’re investigating ways to lighten the load of data capture, whether it’s using the Fixometer live at parties, or engaging volunteers and getting them involved with the collection. Let us know your thoughts!
You’re awesome.