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franbencosme

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Product design · since 2008
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Ayuntamiento de Santo Domingo Este · 2021–2022 · 3 months

A city services appfor Santo Domingo Este.

Residents of Santo Domingo Este had no direct way to reach the services the city council runs. I designed an app that puts eight of them in one place: filing claims, garbage collection times and truck routes, tourist spots and city news. In its first week of testing, 100 users filed 250 reports.

The SDE city app on two phones: the home with “210 notices solved in the last 30 days”, and the “Know Santo Domingo Este” screen
The home screen shows the number the city wanted people to see first: 210 issues solved in the last 30 days.
At a glance
What I did
The product vision, the design of the whole app, and the research with residents
What I did not do
The build, and the admin system that came later. One full-stack developer built the app; the city council runs it.
Time
3 months
With whom
1 full-stack developer · a scrum master · 2 designers · the product owner
For whom
The people of Santo Domingo Este, and the council that serves them
The problem

Residents of Santo Domingo Este had no direct way to reach the services the city council runs. The services existed; there was no easy way in.

The brief listed everything the city does. The app had to show only what people actually come for.

The wireframes of the SDE app in a row: sign in, recover password, check your email, video, register, gallery, with the palette on the left
The screen flows in grey first, with the colours to the side. Nothing got colour until the order was right.
The constraint

Three months, one developer, and a list of features that kept growing. Most of the design work was saying no to a ninth service.

Leaving services out is what kept the eight that stayed easy to find.

The four steps of a claim in the SDE app: home, pick a service, fill the form, my claims
Filing a claim takes four screens: home, service, form, history. Nothing in between.
What changed starteddroppedbecamekept
  1. Started as — eight services on one screen, ordered by what people needed most.
  2. Dropped — the ninth service, and the tenth: everything the council wanted on the home screen that no resident had asked for.
  3. Became — the base for an admin system that could hold every service the council runs.
  4. Kept — the “Know your city” screen, with places, natural sites and the aquarium. It had nothing to do with complaints, and it was the screen people opened to show someone else.
The “Know Santo Domingo Este” screen of the app: Los Tres Ojos and the National Aquarium as cards
Know your city: the screen that made people show the app to others, not just use it to complain.
Results
A full room of Santo Domingo Este residents and council members at the app presentation
Presenting the app to the council and residents. Their suggestions decided which services came next.

A project by Fran Bencosme · PortfolioA project by Fran Bencosme · Portfolio