An innovative city service app for Wuppertal

Challenge

The companies of the German City of Wuppertal and Nortal put their heads together to figure out a way how to bring the citizens and local service providers closer to one another, and by doing so, create mutually beneficial synergies and strengthen the local community. In other words, the objective was to take a step towards a seamless e-society and make the fragmented services (e.g. news, transport, banking services, recreational activities and a lot more) offered by the city accessible to the citizens through a single digital channel.

Target groups

Citizens and businesses

The citizens should have a comfortable and secure digital infrastructure at their disposal that provides easy and quick personalised access to matters pertaining to their daily lives.

The companies and service providers wanted to create an additional well-functioning digital gateway for their services, thus facilitating their availability.

Solution

The Bliggit app

The app is a convenient and free digital solution for the citizens to find answers to matters pertaining to their daily lives virtually from the palm of their hand. It is an easy, quick and personalised way for using the services and possibilities offered by the city.

Design Process

The geographical scope of the platform is made up of the City of Wuppertal and its 350,000 inhabitants, therefore it was clear from the very beginning that the environment to be developed should include a wide variety of services and possibilities in order for it to matter for the users and be financially viable.

Wuppertal Smart Assistant

Based on the initial use cases and technical analysis we created the concept of the solution, called Wuppertal Smart Assistant. This is to become the modern and user-friendly front end of the digital platform we are developing, aiming to make the daily lives of the Wuppertal people easier through data-based technologies.

Recommendations engine and filtering system

In addition, the platform is fitted with an adapted recommendations engine and filtering system, built on Apache’s PredictionIO platform. The aim is to display only content relevant for the users, picked from the wide variety of services and options offered by the environment. As an additional task we had to design the solution in such a way that it could be transferrable to other cities in Germany as well.

Methods & validation

Preliminary analysis and service design were included: Research and Service Design, User interviews, German market research, Personas, Ideation workshops, Name generation workshops,Design based iteration process, Design System.

Results and Impact

The Bliggit app and platform developed for the citizens of Wuppertal and the local service providers is now ready and the beta version will be released for the users in summer 2020.

Summary

Bliggit is an open web platform

The objective was to take a step towards a seamless e-society and make the fragmented services (e.g. news, transport, banking services, recreational activities and a lot more) offered by the city accessible to the citizens through a single digital channel.

Convenient and free digital solution

The app is a convenient and free digital solution for the citizens to find answers to matters pertaining to their daily lives virtually from the palm of their hand. It is an easy, quick and personalised way for using the services and possibilities offered by the city.

Digital infrastructure

For the city companies and service providers Bliggit serves as an additional compact digital channel for making their services even better accessible to the people. The solution is especially important at this critical time, when digital infrastructure is really indispensable.