The document discusses a mobile tool called FixVegas2 that aims to facilitate multidirectional communication between citizens and government officials in Brisbane, Australia to support urban planning. FixVegas2 seeks to encourage public dialogue and citizen involvement in urban planning by allowing citizens to submit maintenance requests, exchange ideas for improvement, and provide input on development plans to the Brisbane City Council. The tool is an updated version of FixVegas1 that adds new social and engagement features.

1. Facilitating Multidirectional Communication
between Government Officials and Citizens
to Support Urban Planning in the City of Brisbane
Irina Anastasiu
Diploma Thesis Final Presentation
Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Marcus Foth, Dr. Ronald Schroeter, Dr. Alexander De Luca
Responsible Professor: Prof. Heinrich Hußmann

2. 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.
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3. Motivation: Urbanization, Technology, eGovernment and Smart Cities
FixVegas1 can be augmented to empower citizens through an active crowdsourcing role.
smart cities
eGovernment trends towards eParticipation
Irina‘s Diploma Thesis
convert FixVegas from
a reporting tool into
citizen as an urban planning
urbanization means more/bigger cities active
stakeholder
engagement tool
in urban
planning
technology goes mobile/location aware
tap into local
knowledge
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4. Problem Statement and Solution
The new FixVegas features can solve three categories of problems through a set of new features.
No Public
Dialog
Inefficient Citizen – City
Request Councils
Management
No Real
Citizen
Involvement
in Urban
Planning
the notion
of „idea“
user accounts
The New
social features
web portal
filters API
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5. Related Work: Web, Mobile, Web+Mobile
Systems engage citizens to report, discuss, suggest, improve and/or clarify issues.
OPUS Forums [4]
PublicStuff [9], SeeClickFix [8], FixMyStreet [6]
NEXTHAMBURG [7]
311 Universal [10]
WebMapMedia (WMM) [2]
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6. Related Work: Public Displays, Multimedia-Aided Systems, TUIs and Mixed Reality
Systems engage citizens to report, discuss, suggest, improve or clarify issues.
Discussions in Space [3]
TaS (Tell a Story) [1]
Shared Design Whiteboard (Shadew) [1]
MR Tent [5]
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softGIS []

7. Procedure
After assessing user needs, design principles, protyping and evaluation through a focus group followed.
Time
Now
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8. 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
User Studiy Insights from Systems from Related Work
High degree of usability, direct and strong involvement of city council needed
Citizen Needs
Government Needs
Talking to Brisbane City Council
Manual feeding into CMS, building an interface is time and cost intensive
Governmental Portals such as smartcity.info
Make processes more efficient, build trust through transparency, involve more people
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9. 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?
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10. The Outcome
Requests and Ideas can be publicly viewed in the preferred visualization.
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11. The Outcome
Requests and Ideas can be submitted to be added to the platform.
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12. The Outcome
All the stakeholders can interact with the posts and with each other.
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13. The Outcome
All the stakeholders can interact with the posts and with each other.
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14. The Outcome
Comprehensive filters ease the management of submissions.
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15. Preliminary Evaluation
A small-scale dry run to verify study design, identify bottlenecks and get first insights has been set up.
Interview Independent Variables (Task 1 only):
Participants
System: FixVegas1, FixVegas2 (counter balanced)
Three Tasks Number: 6
Dependent Variables ( Task 1, 2 and 3): Male: 6
Questionnaire Task Completion Time Female: 0
Average Age: 29
„If a critical mass of users and People at Urban
reportings were reached, it would Informatics Research Lab
be easy to interact with others [...]
via the app. Especially if it was
clear from BCC that they were
listening.“ „Couldn‘t easily think of
anything...“
Task 1: FixVegas1 vs. FixVegas2 in Tasks 2 and 3 Tasks Compared by Time
FixVegas2
4 4
Time in Mins
Time in Mins
Time in Mins
3 3
4 2 2
2 1 1
0
0 . 0
. .
Task 2 3,366666667
FixVegas1 3,130555556 Task1 3,4375
Task 3 3,527777778
FixVegas2 3,744444444 Task 2 3,366666667
Task 3 3,527777778
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16. Limitations
The laboratory context would falsify findings on community dynamics.
Emotions
People are are No real
very important context
different
But all
influence BCC makes
motivation, difference
Real World No type and
User Study genuine amount of
Interaction interaction.
No
Genuine
Simulation
of Social
Features
Falsified Findings on Community Dynamics
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17. Conclusion
FixVegas2 will be provided as a technical tool, nonetheless a rea-world evaluation is crucial.
FixVegas
Tool
Provided
Idea
Concept
BCC
Involvement
is Crucial
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18. Thank you!
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19. 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.
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