Inspiration
SF Vibe Check was born from our shared passion for community and civic engagement. Latiece, a San Francisco native, deeply values her city and is driven to use her skills to foster meaningful change. Harsh joined the project with the intention to better understand civic challenges and unite people toward positive outcomes. David, a Bay Area native active in social justice, sees improving democratic participation as a critical step toward social equity. For Ilia, the motivation was dual—learning coding through a meaningful, real-world project with potential impact. Our collective inspiration lies in the belief that genuine civic engagement can dramatically improve the quality of life in San Francisco.
What It Does
SF Vibe Check leverages AI-supported tools and gamified experiences to simplify and enhance civic participation. It helps residents visualize district-level civic needs using an adapted Doughnut Economics model, discover local resources, participate in engaging micro-surveys, collaboratively draft actionable community plans, and celebrate shared successes through community recognition and feedback.
How We Built It
Our platform was developed by conducting thorough research into successful civic dashboards, interactive mapping tools, and gamified user interfaces. Using tools like Lovable for rapid prototyping, Supabase database integration, survey tools, and AI integrations like OpenAI, we iteratively developed an intuitive, engaging, and effective prototype.
Challenges We Ran Into
One significant challenge we faced was taking the inherently complex, slow, and sometimes bureaucratic processes of civic participation and turning them into experiences that are simple, enjoyable, and genuinely effective. Ensuring our design was accessible and appealing to diverse community members required creativity, collaboration, and rigorous testing.
Accomplishments We're Proud Of
We're incredibly proud of quickly aligning around a clear, cohesive vision and core approach. Our collaborative research, rapid prototyping, and willingness to test our ideas allowed us to deliver a functional prototype early. Importantly, we're already receiving valuable feedback from community members, with upcoming meetings starting on Tuesday, August 5 in the local community here to discuss implementation and further refinements.
What We Learned
Throughout this journey, we learned the importance of community input at every stage, how vital clear and inspiring design can be to civic engagement, and the potential AI and gamification have in dramatically increasing citizen involvement. This process reinforced our commitment to accessibility, simplicity, and genuine user enjoyment.
What's Next for SF Vibe Check
Moving forward, we aim to deepen community engagement by expanding our platform's functionalities, refining our AI-driven features, and hosting regular community events to drive ongoing participation. Our next steps include broader pilot testing in more San Francisco districts and establishing robust partnerships with local organizations to ensure sustainable, positive civic impact.
Built With
- ai-supported-civic-engagement
- deliberative-democracy
- lovable
- participatory-budgeting
- supabase
- surveytools
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