City of Antwerp app

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Service design

The city of Antwerp is many things—the city by the river, Belgium’s second-largest city, and the opposite of a parking lot—but first and foremost, it’s our home. The city administration aimed to develop an app to better serve its citizens, visitors, businesses, and public officials. The app needed to offer a wide range of services, from tourist information to administrative support, and be user-friendly for all audiences.

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The challenge was to develop a service concept and information architecture for the app that addressed the varied needs of different user groups, including residents, tourists, and businesses. We co-created the app’s functionalities with these groups through workshops and online surveys, a necessity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Managing the project entirely digitally, including stakeholder meetings and user validations, added an extra layer of complexity.

The app was developed in partnership with Yellow Window, and the functionalities were tested with residents at various stages through the platform Buffl. The app was an instant success, with thousands of downloads in the first week alone. This success was largely due to the extensive co-creation process, where end-users were involved from the beginning. The result is a service-oriented app that perfectly meets the needs of the city of Antwerp.