Council updates  |  21 Dec 2023

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Christchurch City Council's web-app SmartView is more user-friendly after a comprehensive re-design.

SmartView pulls together near real-time data from a range of public and private organisations, making information easy for locals and visitors to access and make decisions that inform their daily activities. For example, what’s on in the city, the transportation network, public facilities, mountain bike trails, cycleways and more.

One of the more popular datasets on SmartView is an interactive map of the locations of Council-owned fruit trees that the community can forage. 

Smart Christchurch manager Michael Healy says SmartView was relaunched on 15 December, just in time for the summer season.

SmartView was first launched in 2017 and has remained managed by Council’s Smart Christchurch team. While the web-app has been updated since then, Mr Healy says this is its biggest rework to date.

“SmartView is growing in terms of users, content, and organisations involved, and it needed a slicker and more optimised platform. We only had 10 datasets at its launch, and now we have over 70 offering unique information and insights on the city of Christchurch.

“This growth gave us an opportunity to undertake a significant co-design process, identifying ways to improve its functionality and look.”

The web-app now has a contemporary new look and feel, alongside an optimised user experience.

SmartView is developed in-house, and the Smart Christchurch team have worked with local innovators Colabs, a team from company MadeCurious on the research informing the co-design, which came from multiple user surveys, workshops, and engagement from the recent Innovation Expo.

“We are thrilled with the new look and really excited to share it with the public.”

Mr Healy says SmartView is a leader in open city data, with datasets and features that people are genuinely interested in.

“The redesign has made SmartView more appealing to other cities interested in implementing a similar initiative. That’s something that we are definitely interested to share.”

Mr Healy says the Smart Christchurch team is keen to hear feedback of the new design so that they can keep improving it, which can be provided here at SmartView.