Behind the Scenes: How Loop happened

Posted Le 6 novembre 2015

A communication platform for fall prevention had been in the works for over a year prior to launching Loop in September 2015. It was a fascinating project because it required expertise in knowledge mobilization, user-centred design and web development. For those who are interested, here is a look into everything that went into building Loop.

The Fall Prevention Community of Practice (CoP) has been around since 2010. Over the next five years, what started as a small group quickly grew to over 1700 practitioners, students, researchers, caregivers, older adult groups and policy planners. Much of the members’ communication with each other was funnelled through our Coordinator, Marguerite Thomas, or the Core Team. The twenty dedicated members of the Core Team had massive professional networks and extensive knowledge of fall prevention. They connected members with research, evidence-based resources, programs and each other. As our CoP continued to grow, the process of funneling communications through the Core Team and relying solely on this small group’s knowledge and connections became impractical. We wanted to find a way to allow Fall Prevention CoP members to connect directly with each other.

We began by consulting our membership about their needs, wants and limitations for interacting with the CoP and its members. We revisited a membership survey completed the year prior and hosted an online focus group. Some very interesting themes emerged:

• There was a lack of success finding answers in the literature when searching alone.


• When members had a fall prevention question, they needed an answer FAST.


• They preferred to hear from practitioners who are in the field doing the work, as well as those who develop best practice guidelines.


• Many organizations had not considered partnering/collaborating on a provincial or national scale due to the perceived difficulty of reaching out.


• Members were looking to network with different people at different times. Some were looking to connect with local practitioners and people with lived experience. Many wanted to connect with researchers and policy-makers at higher levels of government.


• Social media was blocked at many organizations.


• Members valued a simple user interface for any new technology, but had a long list of features they’d like to be able to use.

Using this membership feedback, we prepared a Request for Proposal for an online platform that would address the needs identified. We had ten firms submit proposals and we met with the top three firms in person before settling on Mouth Media (www.mouthmedia.com) to work with us. Over several meetings with designers from Mouth Media and members of the CoP Core Team, we hashed out the key features of the platform. We selected features that would provide members the ability to network, ask/respond to questions and work together online.

The Loop brand was created with enormous input from the CoP’s stakeholders. This was a crucial step to ensuring that the community for which we built this platform felt like they owned a piece of it. We surveyed them on the platform name, colours, logo and domain name. The name Loop originated from the idea of closing the Loop between knowledge and practice. Loop is centred on the idea of connectedness. The platform works to connect ideas, organizations and members. Plus, it is short and catchy!

Now that we had developed a wireframe (a basic plan of what goes where on the website), the designers got to work coding and our team was busy gathering, writing and translating the content for every page. Once the initial build was complete, we went through the website with a fine tooth comb to make sure all the features worked and the content was in the appropriate place.

We thought Loop was in decent shape, so we invited our stakeholders, CoP Core Team members and focus group participants to join for a soft launch. We are incredibly thankful to this group of 80 people for pointing out so many things that could be improved to make Loop spectacular. They told us about broken links, typos, confusing instructions, error messages and display issues. They took the time to test in both official languages, on desktops and mobile devices, and using different internet browsers. The soft launch lasted approximately 6 weeks.

On September 17, 2015 we announced the public launch of Loop at the End Falls this Fall conference in Orillia, ON. Our exhibit that day was simple and completely on-brand thanks to new postcards, stylus pens and a banner professionally designed for the Loop launch. We had a massive TV screen we used to demonstrate Loop to groups of people and iPads for people wishing to register on the spot. There was a lot of excitement that day from fall prevention professionals about how this new communication platform could help them with their work.

Since the launch, 370 Community of Practice members have created their profiles on Loop and started exploring the website. We are continuing our promotional efforts by speaking widely about Loop at conferences, workshops, webinars and local meetings. Our next hurdle is to increase engagement and participation on Loop among all members. We understand that it can be intimidating to make a post asking a question or providing some advice. We hope to show Loop members that we are all here to learn and that everyone has something useful to share. We need brave individuals to break the ice and encourage others to participate.

Thank you to everyone who had a hand in the massive undertaking of developing Loop. Together we can make this communication platform a place where great strides for fall prevention are made. We’re all fall prevention nuts after all – let’s get this movement growing!