Radka Birtday cakes
Project Objectives
To find a way how we can increase the safety of residents and visitors to the city, using connected technology on the streets of Barcelona in the future.
About the challenge:
Barcelona is a worldwide reference as a smart city actively developing its sustainability, connectivity, and innovations.
The city which received almost 12 million tourists last year (2019), has faced a new issue – high levels of theft and crime. “There were 83,472 robberies in Barcelona from January to August 15th according to data from the Catalan police.” (2019, Ara Newspaper). This high level of criminal incidents has been progressively damaging the city’s reputation, daily life, and productivity of the local police department.
With this challenge, Barcelona City Council (Ajuntament de Barcelona) is looking to discover and implement digitization and connected technology to create safer experiences for the residents and visitors of the city. The council is looking for products or services that can be integrated into the city’s installations and be found directly on the streets of Barcelona, and offer preventative and post-crime attention services.
The goal of this initiative is to gain back trust and to improve the city’s reputation as an inviting, safe, and connected city.
With the coronavirus pandemic, the city council is also interested in an innovative way for users to easily follow the sanitary restrictions and regulations related to COVID-19.
The challenge consists of a 5 days sprint focused on creating and developing ideas that will improve the current situation while focusing on the final users and providing innovative solutions.
Using prototyping and testing techniques at the end of the sprint, we will validate the scope and projection of the new product/service.
Mid-term/Long term goals (possible approaches)
Create disruptive solutions and tackle new business models and users.
Implement 5G and IoT technologies.
Become a benchmark city in digital transformation and connected urban solutions.
Imagine and discover “cities of the future”.
Create a stronger relationship between residents & city council.
Problems:
51% of those surveyed on Twitter, said they feel that Barcelona is an unsafe city.
Out of desperation, some residents organize voluntary patrols to prevent crimes, which can be dangerous for them.
48.5% of Barcelona residents consider that the lack of security is the aspect that has worsened the most in the city, according to the second Barcelona Barometer prepared by the Centre d’Estudis Sociològics for Metrópoli Abierta.
High levels of frustration when being robbed and left without a way to communicate, credit card, and/or ID. (Especially for foreigners visiting the city)
Communication difficulties with the police speaking a foreign language.
Lack of knowledge of where to seek help and how to approach the police in case of a crime.
Lack of knowledge of correct action while witnessing a crime.
Links of interest:
To translate websites from Spanish: http://itools.com/tool/google-translate-web-page-translator
Tourism stats by City Council
https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/turisme/sites/default/files/capsula_2_-_iaotb19_1.pdf
BBC Article
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49409625
Citizen Collaboration against crime
https://theurbanactivist.com/idea/citizen-collaboration-in-barcelona-stands-up-for-a-safe-city/
Article: Tourism is no longer the main problem
https://www.metropoliabierta.com/el-pulso-de-la-ciudad/turismo/el-turismo-deja-de-ser-un-problema-para-los-barceloneses_14744_102.html/es
Barcelona Against Robbery
https://www.roarbcn.com
Barcelona as Smart City
http://www.barcinno.com/barcelona-smart-city-technologi
Barcelona: next generation Smart City
https://www.urban-hub.com/cities/smart-city-3-0-ask-barcelona-about-the-next-generation-of-smart-cities/
Introduction
Design Sprint
Our first project at Bcn Code School was aimed to help the Barcelona City Council to discover and implement digitization and technology to create safer experiences for the residents and visitors. The goal of this initiative was to gain back trust and to improve the city’s reputation as an inviting, safe, and connected city.
Barcelona residents and visitors meet with problems like:
– Feeling insecure, especially in the most touristic city areas.
– High levels of frustration when being robbed.
– Being left without a way to communicate.
– Being left without Important personal items like a credit card, money, and/or ID or Passport.
– Lack of knowledge of where to seek help and how to approach the police in case of a crime.
– Lack of knowledge of the actions to take when witnessing a crime.
On a projected worked following members:
Lucie Mayrova, Ricardo de Sousa, Mateo Pardo, Polina Zagorski, Margarita Solovyeva – facilitator
Research & sketch the solutions
After researching the topic, each member of the team did a small presentation about the problem with robberies in Barcelona. The purpose was to find information about how the problem affects locals and tourists.
While the speaker was presenting, the other members of the team had to write down all the interesting challenges, problems, and ideas that come to their minds. For that, we used the “How might we” (HMW) technique. HMW is a technique for brainstorming new opportunities and ideas.
This exercise highlighted how the Barcelona pickpockets issue has been mentioned several times by international media like the BBC, The Guardian, and TripAdvisor.
After sharing with the rest of the team all HMW we organized them into 6 groups: Warnings, Preventing, Informing, Support, Interaction with Police, Local Community
The 2 most important HMW questions we selected were: HMW help people report robbery if their phone was stolen? HMW help tourists to be aware of thefts.
Long term goal
Once the team selected the 2 HMWs to focus on, we did a brainstorming of the long terms goals that we would like to achieve with our product. In conclusion, we decided that the long-term goal of our solution would be that “In 2 years time BCN will set an example strategy for crime prevention and reporting”. IN 2 YEARS’ TIME BCN SETS AN EXAMPLE STRATEGY FOR CRIME PREVENTION AND REPORTING.
Sprint Questions
Sprint Questions was the time to think about difficulties and constraints that we may meet in our way of creating a product. The team confirmed that the biggest hurdle would be the lack of easy access to the information.
Journey map
We drew the journey map identifying different types of users and their potential reactions. The experience was divided into different blocks: how they received information about our product, the familiarity with the location, the reaction to the incident, the interaction with the product, and the goal. We identified that the most critical moments are when a person was robbed or when he witnessed a robbery.
The map also made evident that all the users of our solution will be in a critical state of mind: frustrated, upset, or lost. This state of mind means that they will be very distracted affecting their attention when using our product.
Lightning Demos
Lighting Demos were a great time for the team to get inspired. It helped us to research similar products, ideas, and features that could improve our solution. During the exercise, for example, we have identified that people don’t like machines that are too close to human appearance. Also, we felt encouraged to create a sustainable and self-sufficient product (eg. by adding solar panels).
Four-Step Sketch
Four-Step Sketch was the time when we had to start to transform our ideas and findings into a tangible product.
This process is divided into the following steps:
1- Notes (20 mins): Gather key information discussed previously: HMW, long-term goal, what-ifs, how can we, sprint questions, etc.
2- Ideas (20 mins): Doodle roughly the main ideas or concepts to take into account in the solution.
3- Crazy 8s (8 mins): Try to make 8 rapid variations of a product or part of the product.
4- Solution sketch (30+ mins): Choose one of the variations and figure out the details in 3 clear sections combining text and drawings. As a result, most of the group members ended up proposing a device similar to an airport check-in machine or a parameter.
Voting For The Best Solutions
Day 2 was a decision day! We had to select the solution to develop in a storyboard. We used a Heat Map to identify visually the best ideas from each proposal. The highlighted areas were where we set our focus on.
The heat map narrowed the path. We decided to work on a device that would have software to assist victims and witnesses of theft. It was obvious that we have to include emergency phone numbers, police and embassy contact details, and any other useful information.
User test flow
During the User Test Flow exercise, each team member wrote the 6 steps that users needed to perform from the entry point until reaching their goal of sharing feedback. We presented and voted for the best User Test Flow.
This gave us key screens and steps to develop in the storyboard like a welcome page with languages to choose from, clear forms to report incidents, and ways to communicate with the local authorities.
The storyboard
The idea of the Storyboard is to sketch out an entire journey through our product with enough details, including key concepts previously agreed on so that all group members are aligned on what goes into the prototype. No new ideas could be added at this point.
The storyboard has opened a discussion about the user journey while using our product. We have realized the importance of the journey to be present to our user testers and have decided to spend some extra time/thinking about developing a cohesive and coherent structure that would give a better understanding to our user testers when testing our app.
Prototyping
During day 3, taking the storyboard as a baseline, we created a prototype of our solution. We split our team into two artists and two collectors: Artists worked on the design of a prototype and the Collectors gathered all the necessary information. At the end of the day, we prepared for the following testing day by defining the script for the testing interviews.
Initially, we were really focused on the structure and functionality of the software, but soon we realized that the interface did not look very attractive. Despite being a service representing the local authority and the local police, we had to further develop the aesthetics to make it more inviting and user-friendly.
Also at this point, we could work on the detail of the page’s flow and the navigation through the service. We could identify the dead ends to improve and solve them logically.
Test The Prototype With The Users
Day 4 was a very productive and dynamic day, 5 users tested our prototype.
We drew a table on the whiteboard with every user’s name and separated all into 3 categories, positive, negative, and neutral. For the test, one person interviewed the user, and another one took notes about the user’s reactions/comments.
After testing three users, we identified some problems in our prototype and we made some changes to test in the last 2 user interviews. We realized that we had to explain to the users the purpose of some of the steps and we had to make some of the icons bigger.
Once all users had completed the testing we could clearly see problems that we were not aware of. These were a lack of information to guide the user during the navigation and after using our service, a lack of details, and a lack of icons that are easier to read than text.
Summary
Our team understood the importance of the process of Design Sprint 2.0 and we were very satisfied with our project. Design Sprint is a very practical step-by-step process to solve big challenges and create new products.
After finishing testing we confirmed that with BCN Patrol we could solve our HMW questions and the long-term goal. We managed to try out the side of the application that helps the victims of theft, but more development will be required to help the witness.