Designing a Marketplace for Smart City Solutions
Service Design | Open & Agile Smart Cities
The term “Smart City” may now be more than a decade old, but cities across the world are struggling with digital transformation and the application of new technologies.
Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) is a network of over 150 cities and municipalities worldwide. OASC approached Context Studio to help with the design & prototyping of a suite of services to meet the needs of their member cities.
ITYxCITY Catalogue emerged as one of those services – an answer to challenges faced by cities in identifying replicable, cost-effective technology solutions, proven in contexts similar to their own.
All cities have unique requirements – harbour towns, tourist destinations, tech hubs – finding other cities who have solved similar challenges is a route to success.
CITYxCITY Catalogue also serves technology solution vendors, who can showcase their successful deployments with validation from their existing customers, opening up new market opportunities.
Context Studio, responding to the brief, executed a research sprint of 14 x 1hr research interviews with representatives of 9 municipalities and 5 vendor companies. Insights were workshopped with key stakeholders, identifying a key challenge:
“Provide cities with validated information on fully deployed technologies in order to procure solutions for urban challenges.”
Vendors too contributed that they struggle with constantly being asked to prove technologies repeatedly in pilots, while scaled deployment is their goal.
CITYxCITY Catalogue responds by providing municipalities and local authorities a research tool for decision making, and by supporting business goals of vendors and tech companies.
We’ve built a service supporting an ecosystem of best practice, a marketplace for solutions, and a team who work hard to curate and validate those solutions in collaboration with the cities which have deployed them.
CITYxCITY Catalogue was initially prototyped using technology from a third party vendor. User testing showed a simpler, more focused service experience was required, so Context Studio built and iterated a new prototype using WordPress.
This functional, medium-fidelity prototype, was further tested to validate information architecture, content curation, and backstage activities required for a scaled service.
Having validated the user experience, and understood resource requirements, we commenced a BETA phase. A team was recruited to research, curate, and validate content, and to communicate with municipalities and vendors. The Catalogue was integrated into the “CITYxCITY” brand, alongside the CITYxCITY Academy and CITYxCITY Festival.
Context Studio, with OASC, then worked with Prophets, one of Belgium’s foremost creative agencies, to implement a public BETA version, based upon open source, interoperable content management.
This functional, medium-fidelity prototype, was further tested to validate information architecture, content curation, and backstage activities required for a scaled service.
Having validated the user experience, and understood resource requirements, we commenced a BETA phase. A team was recruited to research, curate, and validate content, and to communicate with municipalities and vendors. The Catalogue was integrated into the “CITYxCITY” brand, alongside the CITYxCITY Academy and CITYxCITY Festival.
Context Studio, with OASC, then worked with Prophets, one of Belgium’s foremost creative agencies, to implement a public BETA version, based upon open source, interoperable content management.
Today CITYxCITY Catalogue hosts 100 solutions from 50 cities across 25 countries and grows weekly. The team has worked hard to validate solutions, and municipalities recognise CITYxCITY Catalogue is fast becoming “go to” place to showcase best practice, and research the best solutions for your city.