Aprašymas

NarraFirma is companion software to the textbook Working with Stories in Your Community Or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry.

Participatory narrative inquiry is an approach in which groups of people participate in gathering and working with raw stories of personal experience in order to make sense of complex patterns for better decision making. PNI focuses on the profound consideration of values, beliefs, feelings, and perspectives through the recounting and interpretation of lived experience.

What is NarraFirma?

It’s a checklist. NarraFirma provides practical guidance as you work, with questions for you to answer, recommendations based on the conditions you describe, activities that help you make decisions, and just-in-time advice.
It’s a journal. NarraFirma helps you keep careful records about what happened in your project, and it gives you places to reflect on what happened. This reminds you to keep learning as you work, and it helps you to document your project for future reference.
It’s a kiosk. NarraFirma helps you collect stories, on-line and/or off-line, based on question forms you design (with sample questions you can copy). Because story collection is integrated, there is no need to export or import data.
It’s a workstation. NarraFirma helps you explore and interpret patterns in your data (stories and answers to questions about stories), creating annotated visualizations you can use to make sense of the stories you collected.

Why choose NarraFirma?

It’s portable. You can install NarraFirma anywhere, as a WordPress plugin or a Node.js web application. Web hosting is inexpensive, popular, and well supported. You can also install NarraFirma on your local computer and use it off-line. (Whichever installation method you choose, we strongly suggest that you set up SSL security on your web site before collecting or entering confidential or important information. Many hosting providers can help you with this task.)
It’s a team player. With NarraFirma your team can work on projects together in real time without having to hand files back and forth. You can plan your project, collect stories, discover patterns, and reflect on what you’ve learned – together.
It’s an open book. NarraFirma is open source software. So if you have a question about how something works, you can just look at the source code to find out. If you need the software to do something it can’t do, you can add new functionality yourself or ask someone else to add it.
It works in the real world. One NarraFirma installation supports multiple projects, forms, data sets, and reports. Why? Because real-life story projects are rarely simple or predictable. So go ahead and make a mess. NarraFirma is ready for it.

Aukojimai

We have spent a lot of time developing NarraFirma. We appreciate donations, and will use them to keep working on it. You can donate at PayPal.

Need some help?

I offer training in the use of NarraFirma and consulting for PNI projects. If you are interested, check out my web site at cfkurtz.com, or send me a note at cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com.

Ekrano nuotraukos

This is the main page of NarraFirma. The sections of the software (and the phases of PNI) are shown in the diagram. Clicking on any of these buttons leads to that section.
This the main page for the NarraFirma planning section. Links to all the pages in that section are listed. You can enter reminders for any page; they show up on this page.
Here the NarraFirma user is describing the groups of people who will be participating in their project. Describing your groups helps you think about how you should collect stories and what you should do with them.
Here the NarraFirma user is doing a little sensemaking exercise based on some stories they told about what might happen when they do the project. Thinking in stories during project planning helps to make better decisions about how to carry out the project.
Here the NarraFirma user is deciding how they will collect stories. They are looking at recommendations the software is giving them based on the answers they gave to the questions about their participant groups (see screenshot 3).
Here the NarraFirma user is creating questions they will ask people about their stories.
Here is the NarraFirma survey form participants see when they tell their stories (or NarraFirma users see when they enter the stories they collected off-line).
Here the NarraFirma user is looking at stories as they come in to the collection. They are looking here only at stories told by older people who said the person in their story wanted to be heard.
Here the user is looking at patterns in the data (answers to questions) collected. The selected row of the table of patterns (at the top) shows that the questions „How do you feel about this story” and „What is your age” are being compared, creating a contingency (bubble) graph. The user has written an observation about that pattern („People under 35 more positive”) and two interpretations of what that pattern might mean („More weight on older shoulders” versus „Younger people have lots of energy”). The user has selected some stories on the graph to read; the stories appear in the table at the bottom of the image.
Here the NarraFirma user is designing a plan for a sensemaking session, where people will work with the collected stories and patterns to make sense of the topic being explored.
Here the NarraFirma user is ansewring questions about the outcomes of the project for each participant group. Those outcomes will determine recommendations for interventions.
Here the NarraFirma user is reflecting on the entire project, to learn from it and to keep good records for the future.

Diegimas

To install NarraFirma:

Download the NarraFirma plugin (in zip format) from WordPress.org or the NarraFirma web site.
In your WordPress dashboard, click on „Plugins,” then click „Add New.”
In the „Add Plugins” page, click „Upload Plugin.”
Click „Browse,” then choose the zip file you downloaded.
Click „Install Now.”
Click „Activate.”
You should see a new „NarraFirma” menu item in your dashboard menu. Click it.
In the screen that appears, create a new project and add some users who can access it.

Or you can install NarraFirma from the WordPress plugins directory:

In your WordPress installation, click „Plugins.”
Click „Add New.”
In the search box, type „narrafirma”.
When NarraFirma appears, click „Install.”
Click „Activate.”
You should see a new „NarraFirma” menu item in your dashboard menu. Click it.
In the screen that appears, create a new project and add some users who can access it.

DUK

Where can I found out more about participatory narrative inquiry?: Take a look at the book behind NarraFirma, Working with Stories in Your Community Or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry
What should I do if I find a bug?: Tell us about it on the GitHub issues list.
What about web security?: We strongly suggest that you set up any web site on which you intend to install NarraFirma with SSL (secure sockets). Your hosting provider should be able to help you do that.

Atsiliepimai

Įskiepis neturi atsiliepimų.

Programuotojai ir komandos nariai

“NarraFirma” yra atviro kodo programa. Prie jos sukūrimo prisidėję žmonės surašyti toliau.

Išverskite “NarraFirma” į savo kalbą.

Domina programavimas?

Peržiūrėkite kodą, naršykite SVN repozitorijoje, arba užsiprenumeruokite kodo pakeitimų žurnalą per RSS.

Pakeitimų istorija

1.6.9

Changed: Updated WordPress readme file to comply with WordPress requirements.

1.6.8

Changed: On the „Describe participant groups” page, added a notes field to each question category (about each group’s status, ability, expectations, and feelings).

1.6.7

Changed: Made „Does not apply” slider label settable and translateable in general (not only for specific questions)

1.6.6

Added: You can now use display lumping to rename a too-long answer or put aside an answer that was rarely chosen (use with care and respect)
Added: In display lumping, you can comment out a line by placing a semicolon at the beginning of it (helps with trying different schemes)
Added: On the „Print story cards” page, you can now hide non-selected choice-question answers (instead of showing all answers)
Added: On the „Print story cards” page, you can enter a custom text to write between choice-question answers
Added: Printed story cards now have a pound/hashtag sign in front of the story number/index (to make it easier to search for a story by number)
Added: On the „Write annotation questions” page, you can now set the order of questions on the „Annotate stories” page (you can also add headers and choose which columns to display in the table of stories)
Added: On the „Explore patterns” page, added a button to export a (simplified) summary of significant correlations across all choice-question subsets (helps in pattern discovery)
Added: More template questions about participants

Changed: The „Spot-check graphs” page is now called the „Review graphs” page (and the introduction has been tweaked)
Changed: The main-page display of story collections is (hopefully) more intuitive (clicking on the number of stories now leads to the „Review incoming stories” page, and clicking on the number of answers now leads to the „Review graphs” page)
Changed: On the „Explore patterns” page, the export buttons have been moved to the top of the page (before they got in the way of writing observations)
Changed: The threshold for drawing extra-tall contingency charts has been reduced from 11+ to 8+ rows (for better clarity)
Changed: Improved formatting of printed session agendas (collection, sensemaking) and project presentation outline
Changed: Slightly improved wording of some of the page descriptions on section pages

Fixed: A bug where the „anything else?” label was forgotten when adding the story form translation system
Fixed: A bug where the statistics information reported (in patterns table) was incorrect (in some relatively rare) situations)
Fixed: A bug on section pages (Planning, Collection, etc) where HTML elements from other pages were appearing on top of the little page-type icons
Fixed: A bug on the „Spot check graphs” (now „Review graphs”) page where making a selection in one subgraph did not remove a previous selection in another subgraph
Fixed: A bug on the „Annotate stories” page where adding the first answer to a choice question also added an empty-string answer
Fixed: A bug where clicking on the number of stories in a collection on the main/dashboard page did not bring up that collection on the „Review graphs” page
Fixed: A bug where certain carriage-return characters within stories would cause the CSV export to misalign spreadsheet cells
Fixed: A bug where, in CSV story import, there was no backup default for a missing multi-choice single-column delimiter (it now defaults to a comma)

1.6.5

Fixed: Bug where code to update legacy data with missing remarkable flags was setting extra flags as well (only affected projects created before v1.4.0)
Fixed: Added explanation of circle colors in clustering during catalysis

1.6.4

Added: Catalysis option to hide patterns that don’t include at least one question asked about stories
Changed: Clarified a few things on the Project admin / Import & Export page
Fixed: Bug in WordPress version where resetting a project more than once would produce an error
Fixed: Bug where a forward slash in a question’s short name would cause the data collected for that question to be invisible (now slashes are not allowed)
Fixed: Bug where story cards html page had title with long messy id instead of short name
Fixed: Bug in csv import that would cause an error (in NF, not in the console) if a data column name was not described in the story form file
Fixed: Bug in csv import where slider with non-default „does not apply” label was being read incorrectly

1.6.3

Added: Buttons to export all graphs and statistics displayed on „Explore patterns” page (without regard to observations)
Fixed: Bug that was slowing down display of graphs on „Explore patterns” page
Fixed: Bug where more than one forward slash in a question or answer name created spurious subfolders in zipped images

1.6.2

Added: Option when printing catalysis reports to save observations and interpretations to simple CSV file
Added: Texts below graphs explaining that you can click and drag in the graph to select stories (this is not obvious)
Added: On „Explore patterns” page, new „things you can do” option to show survey questions for selected pattern
Fixed: Bug where you might have seen a „pattern is null” message on the „Explore patterns” page
Fixed: Bug where not enough space was being allocated to upper-right labels in table (contingency chart) images

1.6.1

Fixed: Bug (introduced in last update) that made it impossible to create the first story collection in a project
Fixed: Several bugs related to multi-user data conflicts
Fixed: Bug where leading/trailing white-space characters were allowed in fixed-answer lists, but display lumping and filtering systems assumed none

1.6.0

Added: Duplicate button to make copies of most items in lists
Added: Data conflict check when updating „snapshot” story form in story collection (to avoid confusion and data loss)
Added: More buttons providing quick access to relevant help pages
Added: On „Spot-check graphs” page, ability to show stories from multiple collections at once
Added: Copy-to-clipboard button on all popup text dialogs
Added: Option to print story cards in multiple columns
Changed: Removed annoying „Please click the close button” popup (by improving data-entry validation system)
Changed: Made „Start story collection” page easier to use and understand
Changed: Improved help on updating „snaphot” story forms in existing collections
Fixed: Made survey text question responsive to screen size (multiplying specified percent width by 4x on mobile, 3x on tablets, 2x on laptops)
Fixed: Bug where special character in survey URL caused link on „Start story collection” page to not work
Fixed: Bug where radio-button or boolean answer showed only on last story entered on form (though data was correctly stored)

1.5.24

Fixed: Bug where stories appeared out of order in survey form.

1.5.23

Fixed: Bug I thought I had fixed long ago, in the „chooser” boxes where you add questions to a story form. Showing the question texts broke the associations. Removed them.

1.5.22

Fixed: I forgot to save one file (package.json) with the new version number in the previous release. That’s all.

1.5.21

Added: Import option for multi-choice delimited questions with write-in answers in the same column.
Added: On „Write questions about stories/participants” pages, when import options are showing, button to directly access import guide.
Added: On „Start story collection” page, button to directly access help on what can be changed in a story form linked to a non-empty story collection.
Changed: Improved import guide and help on updating story forms.

1.5.20

Added: Spot-check graphs page now has buttons to show selected stories (or random sample) in pop-up window for copying and pasting elsewhere.
Added: Spot-check graphs page can now show answers to questions about stories (in a simple format) for copying and pasting elsewhere.
Added: Additional warnings to alert the user of read-only mode, in case they edit fields without realizing they are not logged in to an account with editing privileges.

1.5.19

Added: Icons that show the actitivies on each page (manage, plan, enter, review, journal, export). Can be turned off in project options.
Added: Tips at the bottom of the screen. Can be turned off in project options.
Added: Page (in Planning) to help you observe and reflect on a story-sharing conversation.
Added: Page (in Planning) to help you build and print a project privacy policy.
Added: Journaling pages for reflections at the end of each project phase.
Added: In Planning, added a few more questions about participant groups (these new questions are not linked to the recommendations system).
Fixed: Bug where a question type was being erroneously required for elicitation questions. (It exists there but is not important.)

1.5.18

Added: Validation check to make sure that all questions have types.
Added: Validation check to make sure that questions of types that require answer lists (select, radiobuttons, checkboxes) have answer lists.
Added: For validation support, if you are editing a list item and you click a page-change button, a message will appear asking you to close the currently open item first. (NF needs you to do this so it can run its validation checks.)
Added: Global error pop-up that shows the same message as is posted to the development console (for those who don’t know about or can’t find the development console).
Changed: Improved error reporting when questions that should have but are missing answer lists are imported from CSV.
Changed: Improved error message in survey itself when a question that requires an answer list has no answer list.
Changed: NF’s HTML cleanup process has always interpreted a single angle bracket (<) as the start of an HTML tag (and showed an error if there is no closing bracket). This is a problem for texts like „<25” (an age bracket). Now NF just prints out the < and lets you figure out if it’s an incomplete HTML tag.

1.5.17

Fixed: Broken link on several help pages.

1.5.16

Added: Icons for (nearly) every button.
Changed: Simplified header at top of all pages.
Changed: Simplified and reorganized all section pages (Planning, Collection, etc).
Changed: Removed View and Edit buttons under all „GridWithItemPanel” list tables. Now all items in lists can be edited live, without separate view-only step.
Changed: Renamed „Design, generate, or import story forms” page to „Build story forms.”
Changed: When editing story forms, can now see question texts as well as short names.
Changed: Improved validation of short-name fields in questions (eliciting, about stories, about participants, annotation), story forms, story collections, and catalysis reports.
Fixed: Bug where activity lists in printed agendas for story-collecting sessions and sensemaking sessions were not properly sorted.
Fixed: Error where survey introduction text did not wrap correctly.

1.5.15

Changed: Dealt more gracefully with situation in which multi-choice question (checkboxes) was changed to single-choice question (select) after data was collected. Was choking on wrong data type during story export.

1.5.14

Fixed: Bug in printing story cards where story-form question-answers were not appearing.

1.5.13

Fixed: Bug where choose-questions-for-story-form widget was not matching up questions correctly if question short names had extra (leading or trailing) blank spaces. (Now any extra blank spaces are trimmed off.)
Fixed: Bug where extra (empty) lines in choice-question available-answers lists were creating malformed survey HTML, causing the error „Something went wrong loading the survey questionnaire from the server.” (Blank lines are now being trimmed out correctly.)

1.5.12

Fixed: Bug where the texts of edited stories did not appear correctly in the „Show story texts for copying” popup window on the „Explore Patterns” page.
Fixed: Bug where annotations might not match existing stories correctly during import and bulk changes.

1.5.11

Fixed: Improved error handling for empty (no-name) questions. Was choking on them during export.

1.5.10

Fixed: Bug where write-in answers were missing from the display of submitted stories and answers (which survey-takers can use to save a local copy of what they said).

1.5.9

Added: Brief introductory text (with link to WWS book) to home page
Added: Section links to home page (on right, below story collections table, for better accessibility)
Changed: Moved page descriptions from popup tooltips to texts below page links; shown by default but can be turned off in project admin options
Changed: Improved page descriptions to explain what each page is for and why you would want to use it
Changed: Section pages (Planning, Collection, etc) now start with graphical icons that echo the home-page diagram (better continuity)
Changed: Hid upper-right page navigation buttons (previous, next) in situations in which they had been disabled (gray)
Changed: Made all links have a highlighted box when hovered over (for better accessibility)
Changed: Consolidated all color designations in main CSS file into CSS vars (to make it easier to tweak colors)
Changed: Tweaked some colors to make interface a bit calmer
Changed: Removed hard-coded copy of CSS definitions for SVG-PNG conversion (now read directly from DOM); should reduce errors while changing CSS
Changed: Default font from „Arial, Helvetica” to „Helvetica, Arial” (looks better?)
Fixed: „Explore patterns” page now handles legacy case where observation exists but „remarkable” flag is not set
Fixed: Bug where version number was not updated in place that makes correct version appear on Project admininstration page

1.5.8

Added: Bulk annotation import from CSV file
Fixed: Bug where question links to new story form were not being correctly created (causing it to be impossible to add questions to form)
Fixed: Formatting mistakes in help system

1.5.7

Changed: In Node.js version, added logout link to choose-project page
Fixed: Bug (in WordPress version only) where setting and then deleting read-access permission role/id would allow anonymous read permission

1.5.6

Changed: Added „start here” label to home-page diagram, so beginners have a hint at what to click on first
Changed: Revamped help system to (a) clarify interactions between pages and (b) add previous-next links between help pages
Changed: In story cards, added bold tags so word processors will show selected answers even if style information is lost
Changed: While looking at stories in „Review incoming stories” can now see raw JSON story data
Fixed: Bug where survey could refuse to save story because it seemed to have no name (though it did)
Fixed: Bug where question name with leading or trailing space did not match choice made in story form (now extra spaces are trimmed out)
Fixed: Bug where „Active on web?” column on „Start story collection” page showed „checked” for all story collections (instead of yes or no)
Fixed: Bug where instructions on „Create project story elements” page were out of synch with changed clustering-diagram interface

1.5.5

Fixed: Critical bug in WordPress PHP code that could cause new NarraFirma installations to show a blank screen instead of the setup page

1.5.4

Fixed: Small bug in display lumping code that could cause a lumped count to be off when somebody chose and then un-chose an answer

1.5.3

Added: Option to set custom graph height as well as width

1.5.2

Changed: Improved usability of clustering interface (used in planning and catalysis)
Fixed: Improved error message when JSON was expected but HTML was received (the HTML could be an error message; now it is shown)
Fixed: Small (probably invisible) bug where id for write-in fields was not given story id prefix

1.5.1

Fixed: Bug where catalysis report graphs did not print (list comparison was set backwards, sorry)

1.5.0

Added (survey): Multi-lingual surveys (partipant can choose language; choice is saved for graphing)
Added (survey): Option to embed introductory video (streaming or mp4)
Added (survey): Story collection date question (generated or imported)
Added (survey): For all question types, option to allow write-in answer (for „other” answers or follow-up questions)
Added (survey): For „select” question type, option to show full list box instead of drop-down list
Added (survey): For „select” question type, option to set no-choice text (e.g., „– select –„)
Added (survey): For „boolean” question type, option to set yes/no texts
Added (survey): For „text” question type, option to set width of textbox (in percentage units)
Added (survey): For „radio buttons” and „check boxes” question types, option to include image links to show below answers

Added (catalysis): Ability to change annotation questions while answering them (to build answer lists that emerge from reading stories)
Added (catalysis): Templates for annotation questions
Added (catalysis, sensemaking): Real-time display lumping (merging of similar answers) in catalysis graphs and statistics
Added (catalysis, sensemaking): Ability to filter stories by story length
Added (catalysis, sensemaking): Ability to filter stories by searching for specific pieces of text

Added (usability): Option to set project nickname, which shows on pages and reports within project
Added (usability): Buttons to hide or show advanced and import options for questions, story forms, observations
Added (usability): Improved text-box widths throughout the pages, so shorter texts have shorter text boxes
Added (usability): Better explanation/labeling of cluster order in catalysis clustering
Added (usability): Ability to „archive” (hide) WordPress projects

Changed (catalysis): Moved annotation facility from collection to catalysis; improved annotation process
Changed (usability): Added „choosers” to improve process of adding questions to story forms and changing question order
Changed (usability): Shortened length of text boxes for shorter entry fields (e.g., names, labels)
Changed (usability): Reduced number of entry fields that appear in situations where they don’t apply
Changed (usability): Application now checks that your question short name is unique (instead of asking you to check it yourself)
Changed (usability): Navigation buttons now say „Previous page” and „Next page” (to make it more clear that you are going to a page, not doing something)
Changed (usability): Revamped WordPress launch/options page
Changed (stability): Changed almost all „var” variables to „const” or „let” variables

Fixed (catalysis): Bug where missing custom graph size for catalysis report could result in printed graphs with zero height
Fixed (catalysis): Bug where no-answer answers for boolean and checkbox questions were being graphed as no or false instead of no-answer
Fixed (sensemaking): Bug where generated questions (e.g., Eliciting question) still appeared in story cards when their check boxes were unchecked
Fixed (sensemaking): Bug where story filter with && combination did not work when printing story cards
Fixed (usability): Issue where last few lines of home-page right-side links could pop over to bottom left
Fixed (usability): Many small CSS element spacing awkwardnesses
Fixed (stability): Bug where application did not load under WordPress when installed on Bedrock server
Fixed (stability): Updated Mann-Whitney U test for two improvements in scipy code from which it was derived

To read about previous changes, see the NarraFirma blog.