NYC Nudge

Living in New York City, we see how many resources exist to help people with food, housing, jobs, healthcare, and other challenges. However, finding the right resource can be overwhelming, especially when someone doesn’t know what program to search for or where to begin. We were inspired by the idea that people shouldn’t have to navigate complicated websites or know the right terminology just to find help. We wanted to create something that lets New Yorkers simply explain what they’re going through and uses AI to give them a clear place to start. That idea became NYC Nudge: a small nudge toward the support that’s already available in their community.

NYC Nudge is an AI-powered resource navigator designed to help New Yorkers find support without knowing exactly what program they need. Users can describe their situation in their own words, and NYC Nudge identifies their needs and creates a personalized action plan with relevant resources and next steps. We also designed it with multilingual support to make information more accessible to NYC’s diverse communities.

We built NYC Nudge using Google AI Studio and Gemini AI. We designed a simple, user-friendly interface where users can explain their situation and receive personalized recommendations. We created a resource database organized by categories such as food, housing, employment, financial assistance, healthcare, and education. We then used AI to understand a user’s situation, identify their needs, and match them with relevant resources.

As beginners, one of our biggest challenges was learning how to build an AI-powered application in a short amount of time. We also had to figure out how to make AI recommendations useful without overwhelming users with too much information. Ensuring that resources were presented clearly and responsibly was another challenge.

We are proud that we turned an idea into a functional AI-powered application in just two days, despite having little prior experience. We created a personalized Survival Plan experience, added multilingual support, and designed NYC Nudge around a real community problem. Most importantly, we built something we could genuinely see helping New Yorkers.

We learned that building a good AI product isn’t just about the AI itself. Understanding the user’s problem, designing a simple experience, and thinking about accessibility are just as important. We also learned how powerful AI tools like Gemini and Google AI Studio can be for turning an idea into a working prototype quickly.

Our next goal is to connect NYC Nudge with verified NYC data and official resources so recommendations can be more accurate and up to date. We also want to expand our language options, improve location-based recommendations, and eventually make NYC Nudge available as a mobile app. Ultimately, we want to make finding help in NYC as simple as telling someone, “This is what I’m going through.

Built With

• geminiai
• googleaistudio