February 25, 2017

Rise New York

43 West 23rd Street, 2nd Floor

The NYC Department of Records and Information Services’ (DORIS) OpenRecords Portal has a history of civic collaboration: it began as a hackathon project in 2015, and is built on open source code. The OpenRecords portal was also recently selected by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a 2017 Innovations in American Government Awards Bright Idea winner. OpenRecords v2.0 has just launched! Be sure to check it out before the event.

With the NYC OpenRecords UX Hackathon, DORIS was looking for dedicated, enthusiastic UX practitioners to join together, dive into UX and civic technology, and take the user experience of the OpenRecords portal to the next level.

What is a UX Hackathon?

A UX Hackathon is a day-long event that takes attendees through an end-to-end UX process, including research, user testing, ideation and prototyping. We split into teams that included members of complementary skill sets, and started with a heuristic analysis of the current OpenRecords portal. From there, UX mentors supported attending teams in iterating on ideas for improvement via sketching, wireframing, prototyping and user testing. At the end of the day, teams will present to our panel of esteemed judges, and prizes will be awarded.

Why is this important?

New York City is a nationwide leader in its commitment to open data and transparency. Ensuring equal access to government records, data and other information empowers all New Yorkers with knowledge that allows them to stay informed, as well as hold their governments accountable.

We believe that journalists, advocates, and members of the public alike should all be able to submit a request under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) quickly and painlessly.