CitiZen - Civic Mission Control

Inspiration

Houston, we have a problem.

Our user interviews revealed a consistent disconnect between young people ages 15-25 and local government. Here's what three of our interviewees had to say:

Ethan, high school student, age 15: "I have no need to interact with government... I'm a kid and I don't need to get involved in government stuff."

Chanel, college student, age 21: "I think things being more accessible and in the open would help more with understanding everything."

Alan, young professional, age 25: "If they made it easier to respond to surveys by adding online options instead of mailing my answers in... if they paid me, or if the voting days were made into holidays so I don't have to go into work."

These responses showed us that young people aren't disengaged because they don't care. They're disengaged because civic systems often feel complicated, outdated, or irrelevant to their daily lives. At the same time, this same generation navigates complex games and social media platforms every day. This observation sparked CitiZen: what if civic engagement felt more like commanding a mission than making sense of confusing government processes?

What it does

CitiZen reframes civic engagement as a gamified space mission experience. Users create "commander profiles" for their city and earn XP by completing real civic actions like attending city council meetings, reporting infrastructure issues, or voting on important matters in their city.

Each mission offers different levels of participation. For example, "Attend City Council" offers three levels: watching a livestream for 15 XP, attending in person for 30 XP, or speaking during public comment for 50 XP. As they participate, users progress from "New Recruit" to "Active CitiZen," making progress visible and rewarding.

Key features include a Mission Assistant chatbot that provides instant help with city services, a community forum for local discussion categorized by Infrastructure, Transportation, and Community issues, and personalized mission recommendations that show users exactly why each civic action matters to their daily lives.

How we built it

We began in Figma, designing a space-themed UI/UX system that feels mature and professional rather than cartoonish. Our space theme reinforces the concept that users are "commanders" responsible for their city's wellbeing. We chose realistic space imagery rather than cartoonish graphics to ensure the interface felt credible for high school through young professional users.

We then built an interactive prototype in Streamlit, which allowed us to simulate the full user journey from account creation to mission completion. The prototype isn't fully functional in terms of live data or backend integrations, but it convincingly demonstrates mission flows, XP progression, chatbot interactions, and community forums. This approach let us prioritize usability and storytelling while keeping the build lightweight and flexible.

We filled CitiZen with realistic Davis-specific content including actual city contact information for common services, mission topics relevant to college town issues like bike infrastructure and student housing, forum discussions reflecting real community concerns, and chatbot responses based on actual city government procedures.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was developing a meaningful reward system for XP. While it’s not realistic to expect cities to provide direct monetary incentives, we wanted to avoid rewards that felt meaningless. We addressed this by focusing on recognition- and access-based incentives, such as app leaderboards, badges, and even priority seating at city events. These kinds of rewards are designed to motivate users, celebrate participation, and remain feasible for cities to support.

Designing for "high school through young professional" users required finding common ground across different stages of life and levels of civic knowledge. We addressed this through tiered mission difficulty from beginner to advanced and educational content for newcomers.

Streamlit's constraints meant we couldn't build certain features we envisioned, like real-time notifications or actual city API integrations. However, these limitations forced us to focus on core user experience elements and prove our concept effectively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully created an interactive prototype that demonstrates how gamification can make civic engagement accessible without trivializing it.

Our user research provided concrete evidence of barriers facing young people, and we designed specific solutions for each barrier we identified. The visual design strikes the right balance between engaging and sophisticated, treating users as responsible commanders rather than passive recipients of government services. Our space theme feels natural rather than forced, and the realistic imagery respects our target demographic's maturity.

Most importantly, our demo walks through the complete user journey, from onboarding and mission dashboards to chatbot guidance and progress tracking. While not a fully functional app yet, it communicates the vision clearly enough that users and stakeholders can see how CitiZen could operate fully in practice.

What we learned

Through our user research, we discovered that civic participation faces three interconnected barriers. First, people don't know where to start - there are no clear entry points into local government processes. Second, information accessibility remains a major hurdle, as government processes can feel unnecessarily complex. Finally, time constraints create real barriers, since civic engagement appears to require massive time commitments that busy people can't afford.

Beyond these functional barriers, we learned that visual design carries enormous weight for our target demographic. Users want something that feels mature and professional.

Most importantly, we learned that gamification isn't about downplaying civic engagement. Rather, it is about making progress visible and achievements meaningful. When people can see their input valued by city government and track their growth over time, they're more motivated to stay engaged.

What's next for CitiZen

CitiZen demonstrates how thoughtful design can transform civic engagement from an intimidating obligation into an accessible adventure. Our prototype demonstrates that young people are more likely to engage with local government when given tools that respect their intelligence while meeting them where they are.

Future development would focus on integration with real city APIs for live data, partnerships with local governments for actual XP rewards, mobile app development for broader accessibility, and analytics for cities to track engagement effectiveness. Rewards would center on recognition and access rather than money - features like app leaderboards, digital badges, or priority seating at city events give participants visible acknowledgement for their contributions.

We envision expanding beyond Davis to other college towns and, eventually, any municipality that wants to increase civic participation among its youth. The platform could also incorporate more advanced features like team-based civic challenges, integration with social media for sharing achievements, and AI-powered personalization that suggests missions based on user interests and local issues.

We built CitiZen because democracy works best when everyone can participate meaningfully, regardless of their background or schedule. By meeting young people in digital spaces they understand, we're creating pathways from exploring civic life to shaping it.

Houston, we have a solution.

Built With

• figma
• python
• streamlit