About the Project
What?
SocialConnect aims to connect people to the city and its agencies in an easier, accessible, and convenient way for all stakeholders
Why?
City planning and design projects constantly need community input in order to be more impactful and socially connected to the community. SocialConnect provides a navigable map for community engagement events and collects long-term data to follow a project past its completion.
How?
SocialConnect aims to engage the community by offering various modes of city data collection. This includes but is not limited to polls, quizzes, urban games, surveys, kiosks, and social media.
Timeline
- Background Context Analysis
- Defining the Problem and 'How might we..?'
- Competitor Analysis
- Identifying Strategies
- User Research, Interviews, Qualitative Data
- Quantitative Data Analysis
- Hypothesis Analysis
- Success Metrics
- Ideation and Conceptualization
- Rapid Prototyping Designs
- Design Iterations and Community Feedbacks
- Testing usability
- UI Refinements
- Future planning
TEAM: Dhruv Vairagi, Alay Thakrar
Under the Course 'Smart Cities'
By Professor Jungfeng Jiao
The University of Texas at Austin
Problem Statement
How might we digitize and improve community engagement?
UX Process
Identified problems in current urban projects and did background research and defined a problem statement, strategies, metrics of success.
Identified Target Users, Stakeholders, Secondary Users and formulated interviews, surveys and quantitative data to form user personas
01 | Context Analysis
02 | Defining User Personas
03 | Prototyping
Started ideating lo-fi prototypes for solutions with wireframes flows for different user journeys and started identifying funding feeders
04 | Information Architecture
Designed an Information Architecture flow to understand functions of the platform and organization and flow of the information of the platform
05 | Usability Testing and Delivery
Created Hi-Fidelity Prototypes for usability and user testing and conducted feedbacks for iterations and interaction design changes
01 Context Analysis
Background Study: Smart Governance
Smart governance is the process of utilizing modern technologies like Information + Communication technology (ICT) to create a collaborative, communication-based, transparent, and sustainable environment for the citizens and government.
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Government to Citizen (G2C) model: The government provides a platform for citizens to voice their opinions about government policies and schemes.
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Government to Business (G2B) model: Government communicates with businesses to facilitate the growth of the economy.
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Government to Government (G2G) model: This model creates a landscape for communication between government and government organizations, agencies and departments.
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Government to Employee (G2E) model: With this model, the government can communicate with employees and companies.
Base Project:
Project Connect, Austin
Project Connect will expand and improve the public transportation network for the entire Central Texas region, including new light rail, a subway under downtown and an accessible bus system to better connect neighborhoods in and outside Austin.
Capital Metro and the City of Austin have formed the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP), an independent organization that will guide the Project Connect investment with transparency and accountability throughout the program.
Research Objective
How to digitize community engagement for Project Connect's Station Plans and equitable transit developments
Competitor Analysis
Understood how different community engagement platforms work and did a SWOT - Strength - Weakness - Opportunity and Threat Analysis
The case studies resulted in understanding how the users use the current platforms and what are the shortcomings.
User Interviews
Understood how different users feel while using the products in the competitor study
User 1: Community Member in Austin
User felt that the platform gives them good opportunities to contribute their opinions towards the urban issues in their area.
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User loved the interactive mapping element in the platform
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Wanted a better UI for the profile element.
User 2: Professor in Austin
User felt that the platform is a good collaboration source for industry and university students.
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User loved the Miro mapping element of the platform
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User wanted a better flow for solutions
02 Defining User Personas
Understood how different users feel while using the product
Teenager
Senior Citizen
Professional
03 Prototyping
Identifying Flows for the process
Community Engagement Flow for a design project
Community Engagement Flow for CapMetro Station Area Planning
Low-Fidelity Prototype
User logs into Social Connect and sees the projects
User chooses the mode of engagement online
User interacts with the mode of engagement
User gives feedback on the mode of engagement
04 Information Architecture
The information architecture helped me understand a site flow before I started prototyping.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Onboarding and home page that shows what the product is and how to use it.
Community Engagement Page that entails different engagement methods such as geospatial mapping and online forums
Geospatial mapping which shows how users can provide input and visualize with various data dashboards
Profile Page which lets users customize their community profiles
Solutions page which shows what apart from community engagement does the platform entail
The Miro wall shows how users can post various ideas about their localities
Currently tested on users and in conversation with Stakeholders for testing
Usability and Key Performance Indicators
Understood how different metrics governed the success of the product after user testing the final prototype on 4 users with 5 key tasks
No. of users errors
10% of tasks had errors when users performed them
Time on Tasks
90% users said that tasks were faster by 50%.
System Usability Scale
90% of users said that the product was excellent