San Francisco Arts Commission Street Artist Lottery App

Part of the Startup in Residence program, Civic Studio consulted with the San Francisco Arts Commission to develop an application with the Street Artists who participate in the program. The goal of the application was to increase transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency of the lottery selection process. When we started, each artist would arrive at 6am to register for the lottery, using paper slips dropped into a plastic bin. This process was burdensome, inefficient, and subject to complaints regarding unfair practices (latest entries might get drawn first... or vice-versa). Talking to the street artists about their ideas and their complaints about the existing drawing process, we quickly honed in on an opportunity to improve the registration process using a mobile responsive website. All but 3 artists had cell phones at the time, and the Commission provided iPads on site. The resulting process is civicfabric.com, where San Francisco Street Artists were able to register for any lottery occurring in a given fiscal quarter. Results are automatically drawn at a specified time and results are emailed and/or SMS'd to users. This process saved each street artists at least one hour per day in registration times and improved record-keeping and reporting capabilities for the Arts Commission.

• user-centered design
• software development

• ruby
• rails
• email