Space Apps Challenge 2017

Summary

There's no denying it — our city parks need a lot of work. Being within a metropolis that never stops growing, there's no limit to the amount of waste people dump in them, damaging ecosystems and jeopardising very important community and cultural spaces that are integral to keeping our connection to nature alive.

But asides from environmentalists, what incentives are there for citygoers to sustain their local environment? Do most of us even realise the extent of the damage done? That is what Sustaincity is trying to tackle.

Research

In the research stage, we attempted to tackle 2 main issues with the way most environmental initiatives are handled:

• Impact - creating a sustainable environment is an overwhelming goal for most. How can we make it interesting and accessible to everyday people, as well as allowing them to feel like they made a tangible impact to the cause?
• Flow - how could we make sure that we could bring users from a physical platform to a digital one without disrupting their experience? This means centering on a data collection model which was easy to use, efficient, and had a human element to it.

How Sustaincity works

Sustaincity is a system that asks how happy people feel about their local parks, and uses this feedback to provide an easy-to-understand, comprehensive presentation of the problem, as well as provide potential solutions to overcome negative feedback.

Parkgoers are first introduced to the system through a physical poster found in a park, which will ask them to rate their experience in the park. To make this experience as seamless as possible, we’ve decided to implement a Facebook chatbot to collect feedback, which the poster will redirect users to.

Within the messenger chat bot, users have a chance to rate their experience using emoticons ranging from happiness, sadness, and anger. They are then asked to take a photo of what elicits these feelings, which, along with the emoticon, will be stored in a separate database. At the end of the interaction, users then have a chance of seeing the collective opinions of their city for each individual park on a separate web platform, and depending on the feedback, be able to view images that correspond to the state of the park.

Online, Sustaincity will provide specific challenges that will allow for improvements of parks that have elicited anger or sadness. These challenges can also be shared to friends on social media and can also be continued if a friend, colleague, or family member is tagged in it.

Resources

https://github.com/howdyai/botkit

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-pla...

Learn More

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/06/10/trash-in-toro...