IncluCity Calgary publicly launches with the mission to make Calgary more inclusive and accessible

Posted May 16, 2022

 

IncluCity Calgary took part in the winter 2021 Vivacity Civic Innovation course, where students explored how inclusive usability testing plays a part in digital social innovation. Throughout this course IncluCity Calgary had the opportunity to engage with many community organizations and grow a network of support. The team has worked closely with students and faculty at Mount Royal University since and extends a deep thank-you to the Institute for Community Prosperity for their ongoing support. 

Read IncluCity’s coverage in Calgary Citizen and Livewire.

What is IncluCity:

Technology-enabled solutions, services, and processes are too often created without the input from the people who will be using them. Our initiatives at IncluCity Calgary seek to improve the usability of technology for everyone by listening to diverse and often under-represented Calgarians through usability testing. 


This creates a positive impact in the community by:

  • Recruiting a diverse and inclusive cross-section of Calgarians as testers
  • Improving the usability of solutions, services, and processes for clients
  • Building trusted relationships with testers and community organizations
  • Promoting digital literacy, skill development, and technology capacity

IncluCity Calgary’s approach to usability testing is different and focuses on making usability testing centred around the community and individuals’ circumstances within the community.

Figure 1: IncluCity Calgary’s approach to usability testing

  • Figure 1: IncluCity Calgary’s approach to usability testing

Read more on the IncluCity Calgary website. 

Funding Announcement

The IncluCity Calgary team is excited to announce that they have received funding to expand their community engagement. In partnership with the Place2Give Foundation, IncluCity Calgary will develop inclusive usability testing for technology with support from the Calgary Foundation’s Community Grant Program to:


What people are saying:

Vecova states, “As an organization that engages in social research and innovation, we are full believers in human-centred design and usability testing approaches to design programs, services, products and processes that have a greater impact for persons of all abilities.” (vecova.ca)


IncluCity Calgary is currently working with the Complete Complaints Foundation (“CCF”), a Calgary-based legal tech non-profit who is developing an app to file Calgary Police complaints. CCF is working on automating legal complaints for all Calgarians across different areas. Denis Ram, Executive Director at CCF, commented, “IncluCity is working on a truly important gap in tech: lack of diversity. Having them locally in Calgary is just further proof of the progress being made here to become a global tech hub!” See the Canadian Bar Associations article on Complete Complaints and IncluCity Calgary here. (completecomplaints.ca


IncluCity Calgary has also worked with Calgary-founded technology company Buoyancy Works, a job-seeking service that applies behavioural science and technology to build accessible career transition tools for those out of work and searching. "The IncluCity team was consultative in their approach to designing the process and structured the project to meet our desired outcomes,” says Jon MacConnell, founder of Buoyancy Works. (buoyancy.works)