Welcome@Singapore

Inspiration

One of our project members just recently returned from US for his summer vacation. He found it a tad confusing trying to ensure that all his documentation was in order - both for when he was travelling to the US as well as back to Singapore; there were many things to keep track of (eg. visa, covid test results, etc). Additionally, there wasn't a centralised place where he could get all the information (such as SHN increasing to 21 days just on the week that he arrived back to SG), leading to increased stress levels when preparing for his departure and arrival to Singapore.

Given that he was only overseas for 4 months, we realised that other Singaporeans staying for a much longer period of time will be even more out of touch and hence may miss out certain important things such as administrative documents. This may also be a cause of worry and stress.

We believe that coming back home should be a moment Singaporeans look forward to, not a stressful test of whether one has managed to remember to account for and complete all their administrative tasks #tb to SG exams

What it does

Provides a centralized platform for all the various administrative headaches like Pass Eligibility, School Enrollment, Housing and Life in SG. All these services are catered for people who are coming into Singapore and are unfamiliar with the things needed to be settled before settling down in Singapore

How we built it

We outlined the process in which a person has to go through in order to apply for a pass, enroll his/her child in school, find housing and understand more about the culture in Singapore. Since there was much to tailor, we focused on the P1 registration process and developed a questionnaire to provide a unique experience to users with different needs.

Challenges we ran into

When doing our research on the problems that people faced when moving to Singapore, we tried to understand the process that people have to go through to move to Singapore. We ourselves as Singaporeans struggled to easily find all the necessary info. Having to do a lot of reading and sifting through copious amounts of info to try to understand the whole process. The application process and eligibility criteria was also a headache to comprehend and with so many different ministries involved, it was extremely confusing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being new to product design, and this being everyone's first Hackathon, we had no strategy on how to split up the work and it was tough coordinating with each other. We had no idea what to expect and how to best make use of everyone's different skill sets, but we worked fast and gave it our best effort, ultimately managing to complete something meaningful in the given time.

What we learned

We learned a lot about product design, starting from problem generation (identifying the gaps where our app can fill up) to implementing the solution itself

What's next for Welcome@Singapore

To provide a unique experience for the users, it would require co-operation from the relevant agencies on how to integrate our systems and ideas into their current system that they use. The next step would be to open discussion for further co-operation.