UX Design: City of Chicago
As a graduate student, I participated in a collaboration with the City of Chicago's Department of Innovation and Technology. I was part of a team of four that focused on improving how residents access city event information.
Problem Statement: The City of Chicago promotes many different events, in many different ways and locations, requiring residents to to seek multiple channels to find information and possibly miss important events of interest to them and their community.
Goal: Utilize existing platforms to provide residents event discovery and allow personalize search parameters with dynamic filtering.
Research Methodology
Interviews with key city department staff to understand process and channels used to promote events and their challenges with existing formats.
Peer city reviews to gather insight into how other large cities communicate events in centralized locations.
Surveyed residents to gauge the variety of channels they used and preferred ways to access event information.
Card sorting exercises with residents to evaluate and determined information architecture.
Usability testing with both residents and key city stakeholders to finalize the interface designs.
Final Design Solutions
Final Design Solutions include the CHI EVENTS web page that launches from the city’s website home page and event integration into the CHI 311 app. Both solutions feature event information from all city departments with filtering and calendar options.
These solutions are possible through use of the Chicago Data Portal. Our team developed an input document that all city departments could access to upload event information to the portal to allow it to be viewed on these platforms.
CHI EVENTS features responsive design for ease of access from any device.
The CHI 311 app allows Chicago residents to request, track, and explore work being done in their community. Our design solution proposes to integrate event information and locations. Adding this feature to CHI 311 provides the potential to increase downloads and awareness of critical city communication resources.