Summary
Project: Local Government Initiative
Role: UX Designer, UX Researcher
Length: 3 Weeks
Methods: Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, SME Interviews, User Interviews, Concept Testing, Wireframing, Usability Testing
Background
Our team has been asked to create a new microsite for our city that streamlines the way citizens access relevant information and communicate with their elected representatives. Our goal is to identify what content and functionality are the most important to the widest array of citizens so that we can prioritize the features that will be the most impactful to current and potential users.
Objective
Develop a digital experience that improves how citizens…
Find information related to city council meetings
Find information for government services such as permits, licenses, inspections, etc.
Find and communicate with elected representatives
The Problem:
How might we make Chicago government more transparent, more participatory, and more collaborative?
Project Background
Local governments are responsible for shaping policies and programs that directly affect citizens. But with 89,000 plus local governments in the United States with no standardized way of communicating with citizens, it is often difficult for citizens to receive important updates, understand how their elected officials are working for them and find crucial information related to their local government. And to make things worse, government websites are generally outdated, fragmented and difficult to use making information even less accessible for citizens.
Our team has been asked to create a new microsite for our city that streamlines the way citizens access relevant information and communicate with their elected representatives. Our goal is to identify what content and functionality are the most important to the widest array of citizens so that we can prioritize the features that will be the most impactful to current and potential users.
Initial Assumptions
Reviewing the initial brief, Why is this such a daunting experience for local citizens? Collaborating as a group, we needed to find the right questions to ask regarding their negative experience.
Why is attendance low during city council meetings?
What problems are spearheading citizens to get involved?
Are citizens voices heard?
Research
Domain Research
Looking into our domain research our team was able to find the following regarding our initial assumption.
Individuals living in a community for more than 10 years, for example, are about three times more likely to attend public meetings and contact elected officials than new residents.
(National Research Center)
70% of Residents 10+ years have not attended a local meeting and only 23% of those residents have contacted their local officials.
(National Research Center)
What Users Are Seeing
A common hot button issue we have found is with planning and zoning issues. If a citizen wanted to be proactive and take action into their own hands, here is how they would go about learning the zoning process. Here we have the Chicago Zoning Ordinance and the land use ordinance guide. This along with other gov documents shows that this process is outdated and too overwhelming for the citizens to use
Competitive Analysis
I executed a competitive analysis of direct and indirect competitors to identify the content and functionality of competing digital platforms and organizations available within local government, social networking, and news media outlets. The goal of this analysis is to inform the design of a responsive website that streamlines the way citizens access information and communicate with their elected representatives.
The analysis included: Granicus(City Clerk Website), Chicago Tribune, Reddit & Twitter
In order for us to understand the market and current state of our competitors we decided to focus on the two variables...
Accessible information, the number of documents data provided that city council goes over.
Community presence, how many citizens are actively engaged in that product with the ability to connect with other citizens and government officials.
Our key takeaway shows us that no competitor offers both policy information and social collaboration.
Interviews
Our team conducted 8 interviews with Chicago Citizens. Our research led us to home owners along with community members who are engaged with their local government. We quickly learned that they felt a lot of frustrations with the current process. This was highlighted by one of our interview participants Tommy a Chicago home owner…
“I mean if there was some way to incorporate individual ward issues into that app or into a more centralized system, it would be easier for people to get to those opportunities... I think that would be a kind of a one stop shop for anything you could need”.
Tommy, Chicago Resident
Our team also interviewed subject matter experts with roles related to local government and community engagement. Our first expert John - a Director of Business Services for Uptown United, shed light on the difficulty of getting citizens engaged with local government and the chain of command that community organizers have to go through in order to build interest with residents. Our second expert Steven - a former Chicago Alderman - highlighted that one of the biggest roadblocks he witnessed as an alderman was time. Both the difficulty local officials have with setting a time for committee meetings and the lack of time citizens have to come out to those meetings.
“A lot of the stuff that local government does is in the evening and for working people coming home late they don’t want to go back out. But you can't have anything really in the daytime because they work too... so it's the time available to come out and participate and it's just hard.”
Steve, Former Alderman
Key Insights
Chicago homeowners want to be more involved but lack time.
Chicago citizens are generally overwhelmed with getting involved in the political process.
Chicago residents want to connect with their community and their local representatives.
Problem Statement
The under informed Chicago property owner needs a way to communicate with their government representatives because they want actions taken on zoning and permit issues within their community without having to sacrifice their limited time.
User Persona
Our team wanted to create a user persona to give a reliable and realistic representation of our key audience. Our Persona “Brian” will help us understand the goals, motivations, and behaviors of the people who will use this product.
This is Brian. Brian a busy Chicago homeowner and father of two that has recently been frustrated with some neighborhood issues and wants to get more involved in local politics without having to attend community forms.
Brian’s goals are to…
Feel like his voice is heard in his community and from his elected officials
Find time-efficient ways to keep his neighborhood safe and quiet
Journey Map
Brian experiences highs and lows during his day to day. This Journey Map highlights Brian’s process parking during his work commute. Taking from Brian’s journey, we realized that he had some specific needs.
Time-efficiency, sense of community, active communication and consumable information
Concepts & Testing
Design Principles
The next part of our process, we wanted to create a set of design principles so our team could align on what truly maters for our product.
Efficient: Provides users a way to save time when searching for desired government information or undergoing application process.
Social: Encourages open forum discussions between citizens, their community, and their elected officials.
Relevant: Provides ward specific content relevant to a citizens issues or concerns.
Proactive: Update users on policies and regulations they want to follow.
Concept Testing
Once our problem statement and our users were defined, our team set out to ideate on three design concepts, targeted to solve our user needs.
Concept 1: Apply for Rezoning / Appeal Zoning Decision
A mobile application to expedite the process of applying/appealing zoning decisions for property & business owners.
Applying and Appealing would cater to the time-efficiency need by streamlining the zoning process.
Concept 2: Community Discussion Platform
A digital hub for citizens to voice their concerns about decisions that are being made by local government within their community.
This concept would aim to solve the sense of community and active communication issues Brian had, by having the ability to connect more
Concept 3: Zoning and Permits Guide Concept
A simple guide to show and educate the steps necessary in understanding zoning rights and how to obtain permits.
This design concept would cater to the consumable information problem Brian has, by making information more understandable.
Prototype
Proposed Solution
App Map
Usability Testing
5 Chicago Property Owners
26 - 43 years old
Somewhat involved in local government
Location Privacy Consent
During testing, users were hesitant to give out privacy information such as location services because they are unaware of how we are going to use said data.
In our improvements, we have incorporated a new module that will go into detail why we need specific information, giving the user the ability to opt "in or out" on certain features, based on how comfortable they are using that function.
Before
After
Discussion
During testing, users enjoyed this feature but they wanted a way to interact with other comments. Also a way to control comments from getting out of hand (Trolls).
After testing, our team improved interaction on the page by adding a feature to like or "boost" a comment, so users seeing the page can see which comments have the most value to the discussion. Our team also incorporated a way to control unfriendly comments by allowing users to report anything that does not meet community guidelines.
Before
After
City Council Video
Just like the discussion page, users wanted a way of flagging comments that may be deemed harassing or inappropriate for discussion. A better way of understanding the tools and features on the screen. Users found the page useful, but had to troubleshoot to understand the purpose of each function.
In the update, comments that do not meet community guidelines will have the ability to be flagged/reported by the community. Also for first time users, our team incorporated a page tutorial to guide users on how to navigate the product.
Before
After
Guide
Users found this page useful but at times didn't understand what this page did for them. Why would they come to this page? How is it useful and what can they do if they navigate into each tab?
One way our team broke this down was to include a tutorial for first time users. The only problem is that the guide page has multiple functions and a tutorial process could be too long to keep the user engaged. Another option was to change the rewording of other sections so the messaging is clear from the beginning of the flow.
Before
After
Annotated Wireframes
Future Recommendations
Throughout our interviews and tests we have learned that the users we targeted are not involved with the zoning process at all, and most who need work in this area would hire a professional to help them with their needs.
Based on our insights, we would recommend scoping out new advanced users, such as developers, investors, realtors, and to encourage those users to interact with current users to seek opportunity zones in neighborhoods. The advanced users will go through the zoning and permitting application process for the current users in order to start community developments, such as community centers or parks. This way, communities are able to improve their quality of their neighborhood, new advanced users are able to receive more job opportunities, which ultimately improves citizen satisfaction with the government.