City of Antwerp

The city of Antwerp is currently undergoing a period of big infrastructural works that are disrupting the way people move around the city. Slim naar Antwerpen is an initiative of the city of Antwerp to keep the city accessible during this period of change, to inform users about the current works and traffic situation, and to provide advice and alternatives to come to the city in the smartest possible way.

Antwerp is investing a lot in mobility and alternative solutions to minimise the impact of the road works. The Slim naar Antwerpen website gathers a great amount of content from several partners and for different target audiences (visitors, residents, employees and employers), which made the initial website very complex and not so easy to navigate. We were asked to redesign the current website for an optimal user experience and create a concept for a mobile application.

First we figured out why the current site didn’t perform satisfactorily and interviewed citizens and visitors in the streets of Antwerp to learn about their mobility experience in the city. It was eye-opening to the project team of Antwerp to hear from citizens first-hand how the roadworks affect them, which troubles they encounter and which frustrations they experience. Through user tests we identified opportunities for a new website, and then worked closely with the different stakeholders to co-create a new concept that would align with the users’ needs. Thanks to different ways of testing (from very simple paper prototypes to more elaborated clickable prototypes) we were able to quickly gather feedback and implement changes easily at all stages of the process.

In collaboration with our friends of Little Miss Robot and District01 we delivered a tried and tested new website design that is supported by both the internals stakeholders as well as the target audience. Putting the users in the centre of the process resulted in a new structure of the website, which also encouraged them to discover and use alternative transportation. By giving the right information at the right time in an understandable way we enabled people to make clever decisions and avoid frustrations. The mobile application provided the added value of making real-time information more accessible and keeping the users up-to-date, anytime, anywhere.

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