Morrisville Central is an award-winning mobile application designed to provide the residents of Morrisville, North Carolina a way to receive information and interact with their local government. We are looking to blend our virtual and physical resources and drive engagement of these resources using gamification within Morrisville Central. We hope to use gamification as a unique way to drive continued use of Morrisville Central to further increase community engagement, such as by increasing attendance at town events, encouraging more active sessions with the app weekly, or driving adoption of the mobile app throughout the town.

The Town of Morrisville is located in the heart of North Carolina near the Research Triangle Park (RTP), RDU International Airport, and Raleigh, NC. This area is home to many renowned educational institutions such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Duke University, and NC State. The population for Morrisville is nearly 31,000 of which 46% is Asian, 35% White, 10% African American, 6% multiracial, and 4% other races.

The Town of Morrisville employs roughly 250 Full-Time employees and was named an All-American City by the National Civic League in 2021. Morrisville's economy is heavily centered around technology and innovation, with a strong presence in various major fields like software development, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Some of the biggest tech companies, including SaS Institute, Cisco, Lenovo, and NetApp have made Morrisville their home. The town collaborated with Lithios, a local developer, to create Morrisville Central - a mobile app that merges multiple platforms into one. The app serves as a tool to connect residents with the town, allowing them to view town events, explore town buildings, request Smart Shuttle rides, submit service requests for Town staff, and access a variety of important town resources.

Problem Statement

Morrisville Central is an award-winning mobile application designed to provide the residents of Morrisville, North Carolina, a way to receive information and interact with their local government. We are looking to blend our virtual and physical resources and drive engagement of these resources using gamification within Morrisville Central. Morrisville Central is an easy-to-use tool that allows residents to view upcoming town events, report issues to town staff, and view important town resources for our local community. Since the launch of the app on the Apple and Android AppStore in May 2023, downloads of the app have increased 353% and 180% respectively to date. Unfortunately, despite the dramatic rise in adoption rates on both platforms, the number of active sessions per week has only increased 1.03%.

We believe that one effective way to increase the number of daily active sessions on our app is to incorporate gamification that takes advantage of the unique opportunities that a mobile app provides for a town. The optimal solution should leverage the app's unique features and the mobile device's capabilities to combine our virtual and physical town resources, thereby promoting greater engagement and increasing the number of weekly sessions. Please utilize the available Figma pages, located in the Resource Center below, to view the flows of Morrisville Central to get an idea for the rationale behind the application. Ideally, solutions may incorporate items such as encouraging the use of the mobile app, attending town events, and/or visiting town facilities. We envision this solution being a blending of both physical, real-world activities and digitally utilizing the app.

Some examples of ideas:

• Residents earn points by doing activities in the mobile app such as favoriting events, reporting a concern, or checking their Smart City Dashboard. These points add up to establish a leaderboard and every quarter, the town gives out a prize to the winner.
• Residents could scan QR codes posted by the Town to score points. A leaderboard shows the top 10 of most points earned and the current users score. The town gives out a prize every 6 months.
• Provide QR codes to businesses around town and public facilities for residents to scan after fulfilling a task, such as posting a selfie with a hashtag for the business.
• Geofencing areas of town to award points when the user enters a town facility or event.
• A combination of any of those above and any other ideas you may have to make utilizing the app more appealing and rewarding.

Things to consider when developing your submission or idea:

• How do you reset the competition for the next awarding of prizes?
• How does someone enroll in the competition or unenroll?
• Does the enrollment need to occur for every new prize offered?
• Do you send messages encouraging users to complete activities to earn points and move up the leaderboards?
• Are there additional permissions needed from the device to make any ideas usable within the mobile app such as GPS for Geofencing?
• Are limits needed to minimize Should an activity be repeatable daily, weekly, monthly?
• Should there be limits to how many times it is repeatable for each activity before it no longer provides a reward?

We will hold a Live Webinar on July 19th at 3PM to answer any questions, provide more in-depth breakdowns of our mobile app, and discuss ideas that we discussed internally that may provide a framework for your own ideas.