fixvegas: facilitating multi-directional communication between city residents and government...

Facilitating Multidirectional Communication between Government Officials and Citizens

to Support Urban Planning in the City of Brisbane

Supervisors: Responsible Professor:

Assoc. Prof. Marcus Foth, Dr. Ronald Schroeter, Dr. Alexander De Luca Prof. Heinrich Hußmann

Irina Anastasiu Diploma Thesis Final Presentation

What Are We Going to Talk About...? FixVegas2 is a mobile tool to submit maintanence requests and exchange improvement ideas and development plans between city residents and the Brisbane City Council. Its goal is to encourage multidirectional communication.

10.01.2012 FixVegas Final Presentation| Irina Anastasiu 2

Motivation: Urbanization, Technology, eGovernment and Smart Cities FixVegas1 can be augmented to empower citizens through an active crowdsourcing role.


citizen as active

stakeholder in urban planning

eGovernment trends towards eParticipation

urbanization means more/bigger cities

technology goes mobile/location aware

smart cities

convert FixVegas from a reporting tool into an urban planning engagement tool

Irina‘s D

iplo

ma Th

esis

tap into local knowledge

Problem Statement and Solution The new FixVegas features can solve three categories of problems through a set of new features.


No Real Citizen

Involvement in Urban Planning

Inefficient Request

Management

No Public Dialog

Citizen – City Councils

social features

the notion of „idea“

filters

The New

web portal

API

user accounts

Related Work: Web, Mobile, Web+Mobile Systems engage citizens to report, discuss, suggest, improve and/or clarify issues.

10.01.2012 6

NEXTHAMBURG [7]

PublicStuff [9], SeeClickFix [8], FixMyStreet [6]

OPUS Forums [4]

311 Universal [10]

WebMapMedia (WMM) [2]

Related Work: Public Displays, Multimedia-Aided Systems, TUIs and Mixed Reality Systems engage citizens to report, discuss, suggest, improve or clarify issues.

10.01.2012 7

Shared Design Whiteboard (Shadew) [1]

Discussions in Space [3]

softGIS []

TaS (Tell a Story) [1]

MR Tent [5]

FixVegas Final Presentation| Irina Anastasiu

Procedure After assessing user needs, design principles, protyping and evaluation through a focus group followed.

10.01.2012 8 FixVegas Final Presentation| Irina Anastasiu

Now Time

User Needs Both major stakeholders have been looked at.


MOGDy Forum Know status, location, direct cooperation with city council, commitment from city council (feedback, time estimation, ticketing), CMS integration, contacting officials, knowing who is responsible, see future development plans, can‘t attend open council meetings

App Reviews Know who to report to, contact responsible person for feedback, feature requests or bug reporting,

FixVegas1 Feedback Should be bug-free, extra categories, saving draft requests, editing history one by one

Talking to Brisbane City Council Manual feeding into CMS, building an interface is time and cost intensive

User Studiy Insights from Systems from Related Work High degree of usability, direct and strong involvement of city council needed

Citizen Needs

Government Needs

Governmental Portals such as smartcity.info Make processes more efficient, build trust through transparency, involve more people

FixVegas2 Step by Step After assessing user needs, design principles, protyping and evaluation through expert feedback followed.


Designing the User Interface 5th Edition

Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant

Designing the iPhone User Experience Suzanne Ginsburg

• Who should mark maintenance requests as solved and how?

• Should users need to sign up to comment etc.?

• At which point should users register? • When should ideas be submitted to

the city council?

The Outcome Requests and Ideas can be publicly viewed in the preferred visualization.


The Outcome Requests and Ideas can be submitted to be added to the platform.


The Outcome All the stakeholders can interact with the posts and with each other.


The Outcome Comprehensive filters ease the management of submissions.


Preliminary Evaluation A small-scale dry run to verify study design, identify bottlenecks and get first insights has been set up.


Participants Number: 6 Male: 6 Female: 0 Average Age: 29 People at Urban Informatics Research Lab

Interview

Three Tasks

Questionnaire

Independent Variables (Task 1 only): System: FixVegas1, FixVegas2 (counter balanced)

Dependent Variables ( Task 1, 2 and 3): Task Completion Time

.

FixVegas1 3,130555556

FixVegas2 3,744444444

0

2

4

Tim

e in

Min

s

Task 1: FixVegas1 vs. FixVegas2

.

Task 2 3,366666667

Task 3 3,527777778

01234

Tim

e in

Min

s

FixVegas2 in Tasks 2 and 3

„Couldn‘t easily think of anything...“

„If a critical mass of users and reportings were reached, it would be easy to interact with others [...]

via the app. Especially if it was clear from BCC that they were

listening.“

.

Task1 3,4375

Task 2 3,366666667

Task 3 3,527777778

01234

Tim

e in

Min

s

Tasks Compared by Time

Limitations The laboratory context would falsify findings on community dynamics.


People are very

different

No real context

No genuine

Interaction

Falsified Findings on Community Dynamics

No Genuine

Simulation of Social Features

But all influence

motivation, type and

amount of interaction.

Emotions are

important

Real World User Study

BCC makes difference

Conclusion FixVegas2 will be provided as a technical tool, nonetheless a rea-world evaluation is crucial.


BCC Involvement

is Crucial

Idea Concept

FixVegas Tool

Provided


Thank you!

References


[1] Halttunen, V.; Juustila, A. & Nuojua, J. Technologies to Support Communication Between Citizens and Designers in Participatory Urban Planning Process Digital Tools in Participatory Planning, 2010, 79 - 91 [2] Nuojua, J. WebMapMedia: a map-based Web application for facilitating participation in spatial planning Multimedia Systems, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2010, 16, 3-21 [3] Schroeter, R. An Interactive Urban Screen Application to Participate in Local City Planning, 2011 [4] Stefans, A.; Rantanen, H. & Nummi, P. Online Environments Shake Up Urban Planning Digital Tools in Participatory Planning, 2010, 79 - 91 [5] Wagner, I.; Basile, M.; Ehrenstrasser, L.; Maquil, V.; Terrin, J.-J. & Wagner, M. Supporting community engagement in the city: urban planning in the MR-tent Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Communities and technologies, ACM, 2009, 185-194 [6] http://www.fixmystreet.com. Accessed on 9.1.2012. [7] http://www.nexthamburg.de. Accessed on 9.1.2012. [8] http://www.publicstuff.com. Accessed on 9.1.2012 [9] http://www.seeclickfix.com. Accessed on 9.1.2012 [10] http://www.urbananomaly.com/311Universal.html. Accessed on 9.1.2012.