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Ferndale SourceMap: Civic Tech
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As part of the Citizen Interaction Design initiative, I, along with 3 other teammates worked in partnership with the City of Ferndale’s Community and Economic Development Department to develop the Ferndale ResourceMap, an online self-assessment tool capable of improving the process beginning entrepreneurs and established business owners go through to identify and understand the resources, services and requirements for starting and sustaining an enterprise in Ferndale.
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Along the design process, we conducted in-person citizen interviews to identify needs and problems. We then worked with city officials, contracted engineers, and academic advisors to design, build, market, and launch the tool. Working with federal agencies has its intricacies and restrictions, it was very refreshing to learn how to design with constraints and focus on the problem at hand.
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THE DESIGN PROCESS
1. From the Client
The City of Ferndale Community Economic Development Department expressed a desire to make it easier to start and maintain a business in the community. Specifically, they would like our team to explore a design solution that could provide effective, accessible, timely and transparent resources to the business community in Ferndale.
2. Understand the Ecosystem
Our first goal was to map existing business support resources in the community to understand the landscape at hand. We want to konw, for example, how do businesses find out about resources the city of Ferndale has now? how resources are grouped and categorized...etc. To do so, we:
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Interviewed with over 15 local businesses​, services providers, and government officials
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Conducted a competitive analysis of business support tools used in other communities
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Analyzed the existing City of Ferndale website
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3. Identify the Problem, Stakeholders, & Constraints
From our explorations, we found that currently the department’s operational processes and structure for communication and information sharing with the city’s business community is inconsistently maintained, inaccessible and lacks cohesion with entrepreneurial support organizations inside and outside of the city. Navigating the process and getting support often depends on personal connections even though service providers aim to help.
The Problem
The Stakeholders
Three main personas were created to zero-in on the main stakeholders involved:
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Joe Pastis, small business owner
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Mark Anthony, resource provider
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Pam Sweetin, city partner
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The personas served as a way for us to organize the information we got from our user interviews, so that we can see at one glance what are everybody's vision, goals, and pain-points, how they are related, and how they could collaborate.
The Constraints
Before we start our ideation and design implementation, we also discussed some restrictions/constraints of the project since we want to product something that is actually useful for the City of Ferndale:
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Time constraint: develop within 4 months
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Sustainability constraint: since we would be handing off the product after 4 months, we need to design knowing that the City of Ferndale have limited budget and resources to manage and maintain the new product
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Technology constraint: the City of Ferndale was undergoing changes in the use of their technology (i.e. website being redesign by outside vendor) and wished that whatever we produced
4. The In-Betweens
Ideation - Wireframing - Prototyping - Testing - Repeat!
We tested out different ideas from using a Google Docs prototype to a Balsamiq one, identifying with stakeholders of what works and what don't.
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Design Justifications
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Provide business owners tailored information based on their needs
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Creates a database for the city to track where different businesses are in their development and their current needs
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Improves process for business owners to identify resources based on their needs and clarifies the support to be provided from the city
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Offers real-time point for contact
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Retention visits can be purposeful and meaningful
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Gives community a chance to know what is going on
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Flexible tool that can be easily be updated
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Serves multiple purposes (tracks, shares, filters)
We designed the Ferndale SourceMap to be an online self-assessment tool on the city website. By navigating to the SourceMap and answering a few key questions, users can search for support and regulation resources to meet their business needs.
Features of this product include:
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A database of business support resources and permits that users can filter based on preferences
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A scheduling option to make appointments with staff members from the Community and Economic Development department.
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We then worked with engineering contractors to implement the actual product and is now live on the City of Ferndale website!
5. The Solution: Self-Assessment Tool
Finally, we use the findings from our prototype to map the user flow of our product below:
The final pitch and expo was very successful! Our city partner was very excited about this new tool being integrated into their new website. Personally from this experience I learned how to design under constraints and how to work with challenges that come with designing for a federal agency--to utilize these roadblocks as bounding boxes to help us focus on the issue at hand and solve the real problem practically.
6. Final Expo + Team Photo
MY ROLE
UX Designer
WHAT I DID
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Ideation
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User Research
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Wireframing
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Low-fi Mockups
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High-fi Prototype
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Engineering Contact
TEAM
Marlo Staples
Niharika Ved
Jordan Twardy (City Partner)
Kehan Liao
Paris Hsu
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2017