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.
There will be both a nation-wide and local competition with separate prize pools. Both competitions will require the same deliverables. To compete in the local competition, teams, or a a member of the team, must attend an in-person event that will be held in Morrisville, scheduled for June 1, 2024. The top 10 to 15 teams from the local competition will be invited to attend the in-person event via email by May 25th, 2024. Each team invited to the local competition will be required to give an in-person presentation discussing your chosen solution, how it will work, and how the gamification solution works holistically. During the in-person event, we will also hold a Coding Challenge which will present a problem statement that will require the teams to build a solution.
The Coding Challenge will utilize our OpenDataSoft platform. The challenge will consist of a shared problem statement that will require each team to build a webpage with the Code Editor feature. Each team will be presented with a separate user account to access the OpenDataSoft platform and be given access to one file to build a web page around the given problem statement. The platform recommends the following experience:
Knowledge of HTML, CSS, AngularJS, Bootstrap 3 and an affinity for data visualization. You may access their User Guide to learn more about building a page at this link:
You can view our Open Data Platform at the following link to get an idea of the data that you may be asked to utilize:
