For five UW students, a team project became not only a highlight of their respective undergraduate careers, but also a reminder of just how far beyond the classroom an idea can go. Banujah Theivendrarajah, Allen Lu, Sai Wai Yan Lin, Charles Tianle Cheng, and Yuhao Chen received the $1,000 award for Best Interdisciplinary Project at UW’s Interdisciplinary Capstone Symposium for their project, titled, Northern Link: Building Iqaluit’s Municipal Service Request App. 

What kind of project did the team design?

This student team designed a service request app, called Atausirniq for the City of Iqaluit. It is a trilingual municipal service request platform, with service offered in English, French and Inuktitut. The app was developed alongside the City of Iqaluit.

Of the over 7,400 residents in the city, half of them are Inuit. The goal of the app is to facilitate how citizens can report an issue and streamline the process for the municipality to address these issues effectively. Prior to the team’s project and work, the City of Iqaluit did not have any formal citizen complaint or issue filing. Rather, the city relied on emails, calls, Facebook posts, or a web form that did not provide citizens with any means of tracking the issue or even see if it had been received. 4,154 service-related emails were sent over the past six years and only about 10 percent received formal tracking from the city. Citizens lacked any sense of trust in their municipality’s ability to support them, while city staff had no effective means to organize and manage service requests. Throughout the design process, Inuit engagement was involved, and former vice president of the Office of Indigenous Relations at UW, Jean Becker, supported their team in incorporating cultural aspects into the application’s design. 

What inspired each team member to pursue this community-minded project?

When asked what led them to select this specific project topic, Tianle Cheng, the project team’s tech lead and manager, is a fourth year environment and business student minoring in computing. He touched on his personal interest in product management, specifically with an interest in developing software products that keep citizens and real-world problem-solving top of mind. He added, “This is good practice for me to practice how I can solve these kinds of problems in a real [world] setting.”

Theivendrarajah, the project’s stakeholder and manager, is a fourth year environment and business student with a minor in environment, resources, and sustainability. She said her interest in this project was sparked by noticing how the tight-knit Nunavut community (numbering about 7,400 residents) offered a unique opportunity to develop an intervention “that could have a big impact.” She went on to describe how developing an app for the community presented an “opportunity to help bridge the gap for communication, but also learning more about a city that’s different from what I’m used to, like living in the south of Canada.” The difference between service request types in Nunavut versus other regions of Canada was another aspect that intrigued her. She described how seasonal issues in Nunavut, such as increased snowmelt, loose dog concerns, frozen pipes, and even polar bear warnings all piqued her curiosity in exploring this community’s need for improved organization of community service requests. Overall, she summarized: “It was interesting to learn about the unique context that [the citizens] live in, climate wise, but also culturally. I thought because of that, it was a really unique and fun project to work on.”

Lu, a fourth year knowledge integration student with a minor in computing, was the team’s UX designer. He found the challenge of designing for a remote community unique. He added, “[It’s] a community with a significant population that’s traditionally not had the same access to services.” Lu described the challenge as especially interesting for himself personally, as it aligns “with some of my interests as a UX designer because I’ve wanted to contribute to civic technology for a while.” Chen, a fourth year computer science student, worked closely with Lu on the team’s designated tech team.

Wai Yan Lin, an exchange student from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan) studying Sustainability & International Development, served as the team’s marketing and research specialist. He discovered the capstone course during course selection, after the recommendation of his program’s academic advisor. After learning more about the course, he “felt like [it] was a great opportunity for [him]to actually do something in Waterloo as well as work together with Waterloo students.” When Wai Yan Lin learned more about the project, he felt confident that a civic minded tech project would “be kind of a perfect capstone project that I could do, given my background [in] sustainability and international development.”

How did it feel to win the award for Best Interdisciplinary Project?

Theivendrarajah felt that winning the award was an unexpected surprise, given how many other teams were competing. The team had also been focusing on civic tech and sustainability awards. She added, “We didn’t really think about the interdisciplinary award because we all came from different backgrounds, but we didn’t really assume or think about like 

pitching ourselves for that.” She described how once the judges came by to chat with their team and heard about their different academic backgrounds and faculties, it became evident how “all of our different disciplines shaped the project in different ways.” In their team, the arts and environment members focused more so on stakeholder engagement and app design, while their other team members served as their technical team, working on back end development. Overall, Theivendrarajah felt that after pitching to the judging panel, “they saw the story of the different aspects of our project.” Asked to describe what it felt like to win, she concluded: “When we won, we were really excited because it was eight months of work encapsulated to something that was meaningful.”

As for Lu, he emphasized the real world issue they tackled through their project and how all kinds of individuals can identify with the work they were doing. Despite it being “a remote community that’s far away from Waterloo, it’s something that we’ve all dealt with, service request issues.”

Integration of Inuit community cultural elements

The project team also consulted with one member of the UW community to seek their insights in ensuring their design and app development reflected the Indigenous culture of citizens in the City of Iqaluit. The team spoke with Becker, who is also Inuit. Theivendrarajah shared how Becker essentially became an advisor for their project, where they met multiple times with her to gain insight into how they could include Inuit cultural values during the development of the app. In addition to lending her insights, Becker also supplied the team with Inuit artifacts for their symposium. Together, Theivendrarajah and Wai Yan Lin took on the role of designing Inuit style icons that were culturally relevant to this community. Theivendrarajah continued, “We took symbols from the actual city and integrated that into the app to make it feel more like home.” She went on to highlight how the cultural connection, as well as Becker’s support at the symposium, all played into the clear community-centered focus of the entire project, which shines as one of its key strengths, which she feels “a lot of civic tech projects are missing.”

Wai Yan Lin also shared that they had meetings with a graphic designer from the City of Iqaluit, using the city’s established branding guideline to guide their app’s icon design process. Becker also connected their team with an Inuit elder from Northern Quebec, who shared suggestions on the preferred communication style of citizens. Rather than type lengthy paragraphs or written messages, this Inuit elder suggested smaller messages or offering the option to speak rather than type. As per Theivendrarajah, they tried “to integrate as much of her advice as [they] could.”

Reflections and insights for other student teams

When asked for their advice on how other student teams can collaborate effectively, the team offered their suggestions. Wai Yan Lin stressed how critical it is to communicate effectively as a team. He also added, “Another aspect would be [that] everyone in the team has to have the same ambition in how they want, you know, the final product to look like.” Theivendrarajah emphasized the importance of “leaning into your strengths and being willing to learn.” In this team’s case, splitting work by designating some members to a communications team and the other members to a tech team enabled them to effectively play into each of their respective strengths and skills.