A do-over for the harbour city
Fostering a sense of community and connectedness to improve the lives and better cater for its residents.
Product
ios App
Task
Promoting NSW after the Covid lockdown
Role
UX/UI
Deliverables
User research,
Wireframes, Prototypes, User journey mapping
"Culture in Sydney is oriented more towards the visitor economy than resident quality of life"
Jessica Yun, survey respondent .
The challenges
Destination NSW is the lead government agency for the New South Wales (NSW) tourism and major events sectors. Its role is to market Sydney and NSW as one of the world’s premier tourism and major events destinations. Covid has obviously changed everything. Tourists are not coming to Sydney. At the same time (and even pre-Covid), it was acknowledged that Sydney needs to become more livable for its own residents.
Guiding principles
Moving to the country…gonna eat a lot of peaches
“There are many signs that Sydney’s inherited liveability equation is changing. Relative to other cities, employee life satisfaction has fallen from its very high level,”. Jessica Yun 2018. A main area of dissatisfaction comes from the lack of focus of local culture and community events.
Alone in a city of millions…our hypothesis
"We believe that in order to improve the liveability of NSW, residents need to feel a greater sense of connectedness with the local community."
We will carry research to gain insights into NSW current community landscape, how the residents of NSW view and value community, and where the main areas of improvement are.
From these insights, we can propose a solution for Destination NSW to implement, with the aim of creating more connectedness between the NSW’s residents and their community.
Interviews
6
Survey responders
16
Design sprints
1
Prototypes
1
We have the beaches, people will always come
As a starting point we looked at why Sydney's inherited liveability equation is changing. Against the metrics that matter to everyday Sydneysiders:
Amenities, Vibrancy and Quality of place.
Sydney is falling, and if you then factor in Sydneys favourite pastime: House price discussions, you can see perhaps the underlying issues. In many respects a lack of affordable housing is the root problem, solve that and you go a long way to improving the lives of its people. It allows families with young children to live near their grandparents, it allows essential workers to live near their place of work, and increases productivity whilst reducing transport costs. However solving affordable housing is beyond the scale of this brief, but we can look at ways to make Sydney a more attractive place to live, and promote its amenities, culture and social cohesion. Specifically we will look at:
1. What are the aspects of the region that locals value?
2.What makes people feel more connected to their community and local culture?
3.How do people make decisions about what to do?
The Kickoff..I love where I live
Sydney is falling, and if you then factor in Sydneys favourite pastime: House price discussions, you can see perhaps the underlying issues. In many respects a lack of affordable housing is the root problem, solve that and you go a long way to improving the lives of its people. It allows families with young children to live near their grandparents, it allows essential workers to live near their place of work, and increases productivity whilst reducing transport costs. However solving affordable housing is beyond the scale of this brief, but we can look at ways to make Sydney a more attractive place to live, and promote its amenities, culture and social cohesion. Specifically we will look at:
"Ilike having a local coffee shop"
Felipe, survey respondent.
Survey responses
The patterns we observed, reinforced our initial hypothesis, on the whole people want to feel connected, want to be involved, and that will improve the liveability of the city for its residents.
Insights 1
Insights 2
Archetypes
With the insights data We created 2 archetypes with which to base our solution on
The Local Loyalist
The Busy Neighbour
Brainstorming
Taking the next steps, we asked ourselves this question:
"How might we make it easier for people to support local businesses and connect with their community?"
We conducted a brainstorming session, nothing was off the table or too left of field to consider. We were however cognisant of Destination NSW goals and brand. Looking through that lens we chose the community loyalty card as we felt it offered a feasible solution to the problem, and had scalability.
Brainstorming ideation
The solution: A kind of circular economy
The Local Hero mobile app unites the three fundamentals of community our research indicated was of most importance. It does do by promoting local spend thereby ensuring a continually thriving neighbourhood. This in turn supports the local economy which makes residents feel they are directly contributing to independent merchants success. It allows users to shop at multiple independent business within your specified locality, rack up rewards for yourself and help to fund community projects. In the light of the global pandemic, when many businesses are shutting down, Local Hero, can simultaneously help keep these small businesses afloat, and build a human-scale circular economy.
How it's done
Users use the power of their purchase at businesses within the scheme, when a spend of $100 has been achieved, Destination NSW, fund a $5 voucher, which can be directed towards a project, given to a neighbour or used by yourself.
Project focus
MVP:..The low hanging group
Working towards a MVP. We conducted a priority features exercise of the functionality necessary for a v1 release:
Barcode:
Digital representation of the card, accessible from the nav bar.
Community Projects:
Overview of the projects currently in the app.
Onboarding:
The first point of contact a user has with an app. Essentially, the app onboarding process is the user's first impression of the app
User Profile:
Set up your location, and payment method.
Progress Bar:
How much spend is needed to reach the next $5 Voucher
Transaction History:
Where have you spent your money.
List of establishments:
Establishments in the scheme.
Donation functionality:
Functionality to allow user to distribute $5 voucher.
Feature list
Native v web….apples v oranges
The brief stipulated how we deliver the solution, we felt the best approach for us was to use a native app, as amongst its other benefits it could work offline, was faster, and afforded access to GPS information, we needed this, as the "pass it on to your neighbour" functionality, relied on knowing your location.
Storyboarding + Sketching…A day in the life
We're at a good point, we storyboarded the idea, to visualise the issue, see how our solution might be used in an every day context, and to identify any gaps...meet Jane.
Use case storyboard
Key screens ideation
Feedback…I was not expecting that
User testing highlighted some issues during the sign-up/onboarding process. A number of participants found it too forward to ask them to commit to the app upfront. For example, asking them to sign up before they knew how we would handle their information. Additionally they expressed surprise that the onboarding process requires them to "top-up" the reward card.
Credit top-up Balance
Onboarding
Sign up
Project page, detail page, splash
Restaurant page, detail page, splash
What I learned