Inspiration

The “Kampung Spirit”, a heritage significant of the closely-knitted communities in the olden days of Singapore can still be manifested today even through the new high-rise Housing Development Board (HDB) flats.
Amenities like playgrounds and residential committee centers (RCs) serve as common spaces for communal activities to preserve this community spirit. Carparks in HDBs, too, are these common spaces that could preserve this sacred heritage though the involvement of residents in our telegram-based Carpark Collage web app.

We choose a telegram bot over an mobile app as we feel that it is more convenient for users and minimizes the concern of limited storage of having to download an App. Having analyzed the different age groups, we find that the younger generation - most of whom are our target audience - would find it more convenient to use a telegram bot over an app.

Usage

Residents can be updated of new developments in the carpark through the telegram bot and they can submit photos of the carpark and these photos will be collated to form a photo collage of their estate that will hold up to 50 photos on the website. During the submission of the photos, residents will be prompted by the telegram bot to provide feedback on the developments and should multiple poor feedback be given, the relevant stakeholders such as the town councils can be notified for follow up action. All these will be done whilst allowing residents to contribute to the photo collage of their own estates, hence making the process more engaging and fostering the “Kampung Spirit”. Every resident can upload photos of their carparks to the collage, which empowers and engages them to take action should there be any problematic infrastructure or occurrences in their carparks. The photo collage can be displayed at television screens - some of which already exist - in HDB void decks for everyone to see.

Limitations and possible future developments

This carpark collage largely relies on the participation of residents and would therefore would require heavy publicity by HDB or the town councils with residents in its initial launch phase. Nonetheless, since residents are stakeholders in their estate and this program empowers them to provide feedback, it serves as a platform for them to engage them in the developments of their estate.

Due to the use of technology, it may not be able to include digitally illiterate residents but considering the high digital literacy rate in Singapore, this would less likely be a problem in the long term.

It is also a common concern for trolls to post inappropriate content, but this can be further developed to include photo-recognition machine learning algorithms to filter out potentially inappropriate content. All users would have to register for an account using their SingPass with the telegram bot in order to post photos so there can be accountability in this photo collage.

There is also a potential issue of nonsensical/false content being posted but because this system is a group-based feedback system, which means that should false content be posted up it could be outweighed by content posted by many others so it is easier to get truthful and accurate feedback. A post limit can also be imposed, such as restricting each user to 2 photos a day.

Challenges we ran into

We have technical limitations such as not being able to access SingPass API and given the limited time period of 48h, it is insufficient for machine-learning algorithms to learn to detect potentially inappropriate content. Nonetheless, in the long term, these machine learning can be developed enough to perform to expectations.