COGS 127 Project

Overview

Project Focus: Get It Done San Diego

Get It Done San Diego is a mobile app that allows residents to report non-emergency city issues directly to San Diego City Department. Our project focuses on extending the platform to better support younger users, specifically junior high and high school students between the ages of 12–17.

Students interact with public spaces every day through walking to school, taking public transportation, and spending time in their neighborhoods, making them some of the first people to notice unsafe or neglected areas.

School children, like junior high schoolers and high schoolers, in San Diego need a reliable, relevant, and meaningful way to report city maintenance issues in order to build trust that their participation leads to real change and improvements in the city.

User Research

To gain insights on what was the user experience, interviews were conducted and these were some of the most common experiences that they shared.

“I don’t report it because the things I see have become normalized. If I see the problem multiple times, I’d only report it once, I see multiple reports as excessive.”

What would make this app feel worth your time?

“Reports are actually being addressed”

“What would make it more appealing to students?

I think if there were more school related stuff and if there was a social aspect to the app”

“ Yes. It would give me reassurance that the issue is being taken care of. If they’re not being reassured, what’s the point of reporting anything?”

The most common issue that was reported on interviews was that there was no updates on how reports were being taken care of. To address the our prototypes focused on finding ways that we could make the process of reporting and integrating updates.

Prototype 1

In our prototypes, the main focus is to make the process to report an issue its short and simple for young users.

Prototype 2

Integrated option to look at report progress and make edits if the user wishes.

Additional, to help increase interest and accessibility, we explored adding more interactive features that would encourage users to stay involved and updated on issues happening in their communities. Features such as community upvotes, clearer progress updates, and a more engaging timeline could make the app feel more relevant and appealing to younger audiences.

Taking a step further, the new features were also integrated to the existing feature of the app and ways for users to up vote or comment for more engagement.