Overview

Many local authorities have started to prioritise projects to protect the environment due to the highly relevant issue of climate change. It is important that the projects chosen also bring a benefit for society. To find out more about this, surveys are the right tool. They give a picture of the current mood in society and about which areas of environmental protection (public transport, energy, housing,...) changes are in demand. The agency Green City Experience (GCX) conducts such citizen surveys online to accompany large organisations, especially municipalities, in implementing climate-friendly urban development in the interest of the population.

Problem

Suggestions, opinions and hints, which can be entered in free text fields in the surveys, are particularly important for the evaluation. However, due to their scope and individuality, their evaluation represents a high organisational effort for the GCX staff. Together with students of the courses Business Administration and Computer Science at HM Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences, a solution was sought for a faster evaluation of such survey results.

Procedure

The project began with a kick-off event where the students got to know their challenge partner better and were introduced to the problem. Then the students collected ideas to solve it. To do this they used the Crazy Eight method. Their best idea, their "Big Idea", was then presented to GCX again. For the presentation of their product vision, the students created various artefacts using the method “Working Backwards”. In applying this method, the students received support from Amazon Web Services (AWS). The artefacts created included a storyboard, a fictional press release and a FAQ.

AWS staff were available to answer questions throughout the whole solution-finding process and students received a quota of credits from them which enabled them to create the prototype. The prototype was created in five steps, each of which was followed by a brief consultation with the client to ensure that the final product met their requirements. The final prototype was then presented on July 7th, 2021.

Solution

The students' solution was a software tool, called SurveySolver, which provides GCX staff with a clear framework for the evaluation of their surveys. It takes over the structuring of the survey responses through a clear, easy-to-use user interface and outputs automatic categorisation suggestions based on text recognition.

Innovation in action

First, a survey must be conducted with limesurvey.org, e.g., with the citizens of a city. The answers can then be exported as an Excel spreadsheet and uploaded into SurveySolver. Afterwards, categories and subcategories have to be selected into which the survey results are to be sorted. A text recognition programme supports this process by offering categorisation based on keywords. Then the results are sorted according to the selected topics. The programme also examines the answers for favourable and unfavourable attitudes. After complete processing, an Excel spreadsheet can be exported, which makes it possible to filter all responses in a targeted manner, both by specific topics and by favourable or unfavourable attitudes. This enables a targeted search of the survey responses and important statements are not lost. An advantage is that there is no data limit for SurveySolver and the results can be transferred to a prefabricated PowerPoint template with one click.

Next steps

GCX was impressed with the students' results and is pleased with the new time and energy-saving method of analysing its surveys. For the future, the students recommend GCX to further develop the solution internally and to work with other external partners and consultants to optimise the software tool. In return, the company received all rights to the solution, including the concept development and the code. Furthermore, there is the possibility of a follow-up project with the DTLab and the Co-Innovation Lab.