MyMiami

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Inspiration

In Miami, a lot of families rely on one kid to translate everything: the leak the landlord won't fix, the fender bender, the county office, the airport taxi line. When something goes wrong, newcomers don't need a chatbot. They need the next right step, in their language, from a source they can trust.

What it does

myMiami is a native iOS application engineered to guide entire households through the unwritten rules of living in Miami. It bypasses abstract dashboards and sign-up barriers to deliver immediate access to critical services, rights disclosures, and emergency workflows.

Household Privacy & Dignity: Organizes civic steps by family unit while respecting individual privacy. Track progress stages (1–10) and next steps for family members (e.g., student vs. parent) without broadcasting individual legal statuses or sensitive history across the app.
Pin-Aware Local Intelligence: Dynamically switches local government contacts, transit options, school zones, and crime maps based on geography (distinguishing Kendall’s unincorporated Miami-Dade services from Downtown City of Miami jurisdiction).
Multilingual & Voice-First Accessibility: Full UI support across 10 autonym languages (English, Español, Kreyòl, Português, Français, العربية, 中文, Русский, Tagalog, Tiếng Việt). Features a voice interface powered by an on-device civic lexicon, Siri App Intents, and authentic ElevenLabs voice synthesis—ensuring Creole is never faked with a Spanish voice.
Guided Emergency Walkthroughs: Step-by-step, interactive flows for high-anxiety moments like minor car accidents ("bumper taps") or apartment water leaks. It explains Florida legal rights (like duty-to-report constraints and non-self-incrimination), provides direct dialing to verified desks, and includes camera tools to safely document damage.
Guaranteed Civic Boundaries: A refusal-first architecture that guarantees complete reliability by refusing to guess phone numbers, compute illegal danger scores, or offer unauthorized legal advice.

How we built it

Native iOS & Voice UX: Built natively with Swift and SwiftUI, optimized for fluid navigation, VoiceOver accessibility (44 pt rows, custom actions), and an integrated voice panel.
System Integration & Siri: Deep platform integration via 5 App Intents, enabling hands-free shortcuts via Siri and the Action Button ("Read my next step", "Open this week", "Call the desk").
AI & Multi-Modal Processing: Integrated Gemini for intent classification and photo categorization during incident walkthroughs (detecting vehicle, home, unreadable, or person).
Inclusive Audio Synthesis: Powered by ElevenLabs for human-sounding read-aloud support across complex surface languages, paired with Apple TTS fallbacks.
Grounded Civic Ledger: Driven by a strictly verified local ledger covering GTFS transit stops, M-DCPS school zone rules, and direct government contact ledgers.

Challenges we ran into

Zero-Hallucination Guardrails: Generative models naturally love to fill in blanks, which is dangerous when providing emergency phone numbers or legal requirements. We built strict refusal logic to ensure the app never invents a desk number, fee, or ordinance.
True Multilingual Dignity: Serving Haitian Creole respectfully required extra care. Standard TTS engines often fail or substitute incorrect accents. Enforcing genuine phonetic synthesis through ElevenLabs and building language fallback rules without compromise was a primary technical hurdle.
Contextual Civic Boundaries: Designing incident walkthroughs (such as traffic accidents) required balancing technical assistance with legal boundaries instructing users on Florida statutes (Fla. Stat. 316.065 / 316.062) while ensuring the app never attempts to prove fault or predict insurance payouts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Empowering Newcomer Families: Built an experience that turns intimidating municipal bureaucracies into actionable, human-centered steps for everyday people.
Zero-Hallucination Safety Net: Created an architecture where every phone number dialed or map opened comes directly from an audited local ledger.
Uncompromising Accessibility: Brought voice control, screen reader accessibility, and multi-person privacy to non-English speakers without dropping fidelity between languages.

What we learned

Civic details are safety details: Knowing whether WIC requires citizenship proof (it doesn't), whether calling 311 reveals immigration status (it doesn't), or how to handle a minor fender bender without self-incrimination provides genuine peace of mind.
Voice design requires local lexicons: Fast, local command phrase matching gives non-native speakers immediate, stress-free control during urgent situations.

What's next for myMiami

Expanded Tri-County Coverage: Extending local ledgers into Broward and Palm Beach counties to support the broader South Florida immigrant corridor.
Community Partner Connectivity: Integrating directly with local legal aid networks and community organizations to keep referral desks dynamically updated in real time.
Offline Ledger Sync: Bundling local offline data packets so families can access critical emergency steps even when cellular service is unavailable.