Overview

Chicago is among the first cities in the US to engage Service Designers to understand stakeholder needs and design access to integrated services accessible across in-person, physical, phone, and digital platforms.
This studio project is an opportunity to explore civic service design, designing new ways for residents to access and engage with services provided by the City of Chicago.

Design Topic

Understanding a Welcome Service for Residents should be accessible, inclusive, innovative and engaging, we are going to focus on designing to meet the needs of [Civic technologists partnering with the city and the open data portal].

Challenge

While cities are built around services for residents, businesses, and visitors, the practice of Civic Service Design is in its earliest stages.
Understanding the opportunity space is critical since we believe that the best services are designed for real people in specific contexts.
As the project is moving forward, we need to continuously explore how the service we designed sets the tone for what it means to engage as a citizen.

Solution

Explore and design ways in which residents discover and engage with City services, ordinances, and opportunities delivered in an accessible, inclusive, and innovative manner.
1. Get Chicagoans the services they need. -Improve access to services for all Chicagoans.
2. Engage residents with their city and community.-Build and enrich communities that use services.

By:
#1 Civic Connect Portal
#2 Entrance on 311 report
#3 QR code in context

Research

#1 Experts interviews
with staffs from the city of Chicago

How we approached this broad objective, and what we did to gain insights. We connected and engaged with citizens in context through interviews and observation.

Civic Technology Ecology enables engagement, participation or enhances the relationship between the people and government.

Stakeholders Maps

Now the city of Chicago is providing data via the open data portal. People could search, download data they want. And the government could release the data after they received a request.

Insight 1: Growing wild

Civic tech projects are happening independently except getting dataset or API from the Chicago Open data portal.

Research

#2 Field Study
by immersive research in Civic Tech Events

Insight 2: Tech internal revelry

Although various background people are developing various topic projects, it seems like only techs show up in Chi hack night, so there is a gap between the tech community with residents.

Research

#3 Civic Technologists
individual interviews

Methods
Interception in civic tech events
Phone call informative interview
In person interview

Insight 3: Sustainability dilemma

Aligned with many efforts in developments, technologists know that without people from related communities their product would go a wrong path, but it's hard for them to make the residents and communities involved in their project.

Research

#4 Residents

Insight 4: High entry criterion

Although some residents eager to make an impact in their community, they assume they should know some tech knowledge or skills to be a part of Civic Tech. They don't know what they could bring to Civic Tech and what impact they could make.

Research

#5 Internal collaboration
with other teams

Three other teams focus on public service, immigrant family and disabled people. So we could find a matched community for reaching out potential motivated residents and unmet needs which could be solved by civic tech.

Insight 5: Civic Tech vacuum

Residents now even don't know that many civic tech groups are focusing on developing a product to solve their problems.

Needs Finding

#1 How might we
make the civic tech project more sustainable?

Problem Narrative
Now from idea formation to launching, the real resident's involvement is too little. As the primary users in the future, without their feedback during product development, the product would fail after launching since it didn't catch the user's needs.

Current Journey

Civic Tech Product Development

Since now there is a gap between civic tech and residents, so there is no current journey map.

Design Direction #1:

Bring more residents into civic tech product development

Needs Finding

#2 How might we
bridge the gap between civic tech and residents?

User Class

Civic Technologists and Residents

Design Direction #2:

Make residents be aware of the importance of civic tech

Needs Wrap-up

How might we make residents more engaged in their community by involvement in civic tech project?

Integrated opportunity area

1. Engagement driven by motivation
Design Direction: Motivate residents to join in Civic Tech Projects by the successful cases of Civic Tech in Chicago.

2. Motivation driven by measurable comparison with themselves and others
Design Direction: Showing a precise measurement of their contribution to Civic Tech and engagement in their communities so that they are driven by improvement and comparison

3. Contribution driven by taking action on things with interests and experience matched
Design Direction: Make better projects and motivated residents matching. More matched, more engaged.

Final Service Design

Ideal Journey Map

The service blueprint and Persona

Final Product Design

Design Process

User Class

1. Awareness of the existence of civic tech in Chicago

Touchpoint #1
Off-line QR code and flyers distribution in context

Strategy
There are three big parts on the flyer design, short introduction, what residents could contribute and website address.
The QR code would be put in context selected by the project lead and their project topics.

Touchpoint #2
Entrance on 311 websites and mobile end

Challenge 1
People’s motivation and ambition always calm down very quick

Insights 1
Now there is an online channel on the "311" website to report some issues. And reporters are usually someone very active in their communities.

Solution 1
Distribute entrance on those end

Strategy
Show entrance in 311 related websites and mobile app
A slogan focuses on a low barrier, big impact, and necessity

2. Getting motivation by successful stories

Touchpoint #3
Web Portal_Landing Page

Challenge 2
Residents don’t know what kind of impact they could do

Insights 2
There are a lot of successful stories generated from civic projects but now without good promotion and distribution

Solution 2
Show successful stories to residents

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Strategy
Make successful stories in three columns
Show storytellers picture to make the story more real
Show more description to let the residents read without the need to click the story

3. Projects and tasks matching

Challenge 3
Encourage a resident transferring to a civic tech contributor
Now most of the residents don’t have experience or motivation to get in civic tech project

Insights 3
People are more likely to have the motivation to do something when they see familiar topics

Solution 3
Matching projects by interest and experience

Strategy
The need from civic tech leaders is that they need residents to do user research and user testing.
So I collect types of work they seek residents to do.

Touchpoint #3
Web Portal_Matching Popup

Goal
Bridge the gap between civic technologists and residents

Challenge 4
People concern they don’t have tech background and skills

Insights 4
There are some other works crucial and desired for a successful civic project

Solution 4
Provide some low barrier tasks without a need to join a team.

4. Contributing

Touchpoint #4
Online Calendar (eg. Google Calendar)

#4 Strategy
Integrated with online calendar to collect data

Steps based on google calendar
1. The project leader logs in by a google calendar bound email address
2. The project leader creates a team calendar and binds with Chicago Civic Connect
3. The project leader creates an event in a team calendar
4. The event shows up in Chicago Civic Connect as a task in the tasks list
5. The project leader assigns tasks to team contributors’ in Chicago Civic Connect by adding contributors’ personal id, divided by semicolon
6. The contributor receives a task in the tasks list
7. The contributor finishes the task online or offline
8. The task time has been calculated in the contributor's weekly contribution

5. Comparing and reflection

Challenge 5
Measurement: Personal contribution is hard to measure

Insights 5
Team leader user google or other online calendars to manager some team

Solution 5
So to generate engagement, we need to build a system to gather contribution and show measurement.
Show personal weekly total contribution
Show project total weekly contribution and personal proportion

Touchpoint #3
Web Portal_Personal and project dashboard

6. Sharing

Challenge 6
Even if people involved in civic tech, it’s not easy for them to share the experience with others or get pride by that experience.

Insights 6
They need a more objective way to show their contribution and impact without telling a subjective story

Solution 6
Provide social media sharing button
Automatically generate some references like weekly report could be a low effort way for their sharing

Touchpoint #3
Web Portal_Sharing function

Final Product Design

User Flow and Information Architecture

Civic Connect Chicago encourages residents to be more aware and become more engaged in their community through civic technology.

Interactive UI Showcase

Takeaways

● Identify the most critical elements of the service experience
● Develop user empathy through user interviews or first-hand experience
● Present their ideas in a clear, articulate, client- and human-centric model
● Provide potential design concepts that deliver on their determined critical elements
● Prototype concepts to communicate and refine their ideas
● Provide a technical rational for success
● Explore current and near-term-future technologies that enable the idea

Next Steps

Feasibility
Build a partnership with existing civic technology events like Chi Hack Night or Open Uptown to understand the feasibility of Civic Connect Chicago

Outreach
Some channels to reach residents that want to increase their civic engagement are high school computer science classes, community centers, and town hall or beat meetings, but more exploration on other locations or avenues can be done to increase outreach.