SGBuddy

SGBuddy is a one-stop, personalised guide to improve foreigners' or returning Singaporeans' process of moving (back) to Singapore, ensuring a seamless transition to their new home. This project was an entry for CodeFiesta 2021, organised by GovTech Singapore.

As the project spanned over a short period of 3 days, the approach to conducting user research was to interview close friends and family members who have experienced returning to Singapore or moved to Singapore. Secondary data was also collected from Youtube or Tiktok videos of foreigners who have moved to Singapore, particularly focusing on series documenting their experience in moving, such as "10 Things I Wish They'd Told Us Before Moving to Singapore!".

Lack of a central platform that contains all necessary information and most resources are linked to other pages. Users had to jump from different sites and resources to complete their processes, such as government sites, private services and personal blogs. Solution: A one-stop platform to allow users to not only find comprehensive information at their fingertips, but also complete all processes through a single app.

Users struggle to find relevant information from large amounts of information and resources. Solution: Categorise information into digestable chunks and steps that users can easily follow. Profiling allows the app to provide carefully curated information without overloading the user.

Lack of contacts who can guide them in their relocating process. We discovered that many new residents experience culture-shocks, and returning citizens may require readapting to life in Singapore due to changes in culture or norms. Solution: Added a forum feature for users to connect, and another feature for providing tips and nuggets of information about essential services and the culture in Singapore, helping them to better adapt and integrate into their new home.

The colour scheme of the application revolves around different shades of red. Seen as an inviting colour, it fits our intended solution to represent Singapore and welcome foreigners and returning Singaporeans, to give them a sense of belonging to their new home.

Furthermore, as a government application, using our national colour aligns to the general theme.

The team conducted parallel prototyping to try out different layouts, before discussing and diverging to designs to be used in our high fidelity prototype. As time was limited, we iterated through the designs as we worked on the prototype in Figma.

After much discussion and exploration of different layouts, my team and I came out with 4 main features, each represented as a tab that comprises other functions to help our targeted users.

Home: Featured News, Where you last left off, Reminders, Forum

Journey: Overall Progress, Personalised Tasklist, Overall Tasks

Explore: Singapore101