StreetSignal

Tagline: Fast help, fair triage, real community impact.

Inspiration

We were inspired by a real community problem: people in urgent situations often don’t know where to go first, while volunteers and support teams get overloaded with mixed-priority requests.
We wanted to build something that is practical, fast, and fair: self-service routing for lower-risk needs, and responder escalation for high-risk cases.

What it does

StreetSignal is a bilingual/multilingual community triage platform with two separate views:

Requester View
Submit needs (food bank, shelter, legal aid, free clinic, job training).
See nearby resources on a map with preview details (name, hours, open/closed, capacity).
Get guided routing and distance/transit hints for self-service cases.
View urgency score + reason breakdown.
Resolver View
See only escalated, high-priority cases.
Prioritize by urgency and context.
Resolve cases and update queue pressure in real time.

We use a transparent urgency model, for example:

$$ U = 0.35L + 0.25T + 0.20V + 0.20A $$

Where:

(L): legal/clinical/shelter risk
(T): time pressure
(V): vulnerability context
(A): access constraints (distance/open-hours)

This helps explain why some requests are self-guided and others are escalated.

How we built it

Built a full web app with separated requester/resolver workflows.
Implemented map-based resource discovery, open/closed state visualization, and route focus animations.
Added urgency scoring logic with explainable factors and priority bands.
Added multilingual support (English / 中文 / Español).
Produced a 3-minute demo with real flow: intro → live usage (Case A + Case B) → resolver handoff → reflection.

Challenges we faced

Triage fairness vs. simplicity: balancing understandable rules with realistic prioritization.
Demo clarity under time pressure: syncing narrative, UI actions, and outcomes in a short video.
Subtitle rendering issues: we had to replace the initial subtitle path and rebuild hard-sub rendering for reliable export.
UX pacing: ensuring users can actually see map focus, routes, and resolver transitions before switching context.

What we learned

Explainability matters as much as accuracy in social-impact tools.
Clear UX flow (who does what, when, and why) is critical for trust.
Small details (open/closed states, distance, source links) greatly improve practical usability.
Building for real community use means optimizing for clarity, not just technical novelty.