ÉnBudapestem A city app locals can love
Budapest’s first civic app, built from scratch to open a direct digital dialogue between the city and its citizens: local news, cultural perks and location-based services in one place.
- Budapest Brand
- Budapest Brand / Municipality of Budapest
- 2021-2022
- Digital Product Designer in a newly assembled design team
Context
Commissioned by the Municipality of Budapest, the app was created to build a direct digital dialogue between the city and its citizens, delivering local news, cultural perks and location-based services in one place.
It was Budapest’s first civic app, and it built on the digital foundation laid by the redesign of the city’s tourism platform.
Challenge
We had to meet every requirement from City Hall and still create a practical but endearing product - something residents would recognise as made for them.
The project came with real technical constraints. The framework could not serve our actual needs, which required painful but deliberate compromises throughout. Development partners had to be selected through a public legal tender, and usability testing had to happen under pandemic restrictions.
My role
I was part of a newly assembled design team building the app from the ground up: conducting research, aligning with City Hall departments, and defining an MVP that met user and business needs and reflected city management decisions.
I owned the article page, the user profile and the registration flow. The illustrated identity of the app was a team achievement.
Approach
Research first, then a product that was tested and refined continuously.
- Research, stakeholder and domain interviews; jobs to be done identified
- An MVP defined together with City Hall departments
- Full usability testing materials: moderation guide, test scripts and questionnaires
- Moderated in-person, online and remote usability tests with TestFlight and Lookback
- 4 weeks
Collaboration
One cross-functional team for UX, product and copy; three stakeholder groups including the Mayor’s Office; two IT partners.
We also convinced management to commission a Hungarian artist for the illustrations, giving the app a visual identity that residents could genuinely recognise and love.
Design
These screens reflect the natural evolution of a product built from scratch: each iteration informed by usability testing, stakeholder feedback and real user behaviour.
The refinements focused on what matters most in a civic app: clarity of information, ease of navigation, and a tone that feels local and approachable rather than institutional.
Card components, iconography, calls to action and the registration section were continuously tested and refined, with the information architecture adjusted to observed usage patterns.
- Article pages and user profile screens aligned with the app system
- A registration and authentication flow, partly native
- Must-have civic features supported by custom illustrated “easter eggs”
- The app’s promotional web page
Outcome
The app launched on the App Store and Google Play as Budapest’s first official civic app, and was identified as a flagship project by the Mayor’s Office.
- Praised in testing as modern, intuitive and trustworthy, with a positive response to the illustrated identity
- A fully functional product delivered within a technically constrained framework, through strategic prioritisation and deliberate design decisions
- One year from kickoff to rollout
Reflection
The result is a product that grew into itself.
This project started at grass-roots level: we had the opportunity to shape the whole idea of an app dedicated to locals.
The most challenging part was the test phase. Overnight we had to turn the process into hybrid testing, combining online interviews and live observation through shared screens with moderated tests on site.