While at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), I was a part of a small team that conducted research with the City of Reykjavík’s Digital Service Center in Reykjavík, Iceland. Our team assisted the City with an initiative aimed at discovering why many residents weren’t useing the City’s digital platforms for wellfare assistance programs, instead choosing to use their in-person service or not using them at all. The project was inspired by Reykjavík’s broader commitment to expanding digital access and equity across public services.

Our research focused on understanding the human, technical, and existing systemic barriers that were keeping citizens away from their digital platforms, and providing actionable recommendations to make their systems more inclusive and trusted. This project was done over several months in 2021. Half of our time was spent planning our research and coordinating with our sponsors in Reykjavík. The second half of the research project was done in person in Reykjavík.

My Role

User Researcher and Strategy Contributor

Our team was a field-based research team that coordinated with 5 service centers located in Reykjavík. I was responsible for:

• Conducting interviews with service center staff and managers

• Creating, distributing, and collecting surveys in multiple languages that we handed to each service center to give to citizens who were there for welfare assistance programs

• Analyzing survey data and patterns to identify trends between feedback

• Touring and evaluating digital and in-person service experiences across Reykjavík

• Drawing conclusions based on insights and forming practical and actionable recommendations for the City of Reykjavík's municipal stakeholders

• Presenting our findings to city officials and digital transformation teams

Problem

While Reykjavík had developed several digital services, many residents continued to rely on in-person visits—especially for essential services like financial assistance. This revealed that the digital systems weren’t fully accessible or trusted by all citizens. Our goal was to reveal as many of these barriers as we could.

Approach

Our work focused on qualitative and contextual research. We:

• Surveyed residents who used both digital and in-person services

• Spoke with service center staff to understand patterns and pain points

• Reviewed existing digital platforms and conducted a comparative UX analysis

• Focused recommendations on enhancing and optimizing the city's current digital offerings

Survey findings for citizens not using digital services

Deliverable

Our deliverable to our sponsors was a research paper detailing our process, findings and recommendations. Our findings highlited that the useage issues faced by the digital system include a mix of technical, social, and institutional factors. The 4 key barriers were:

• Electronic ID access and reliability

• Language and accessibility gaps

• Low awareness

• Desire for human interaction

Based on the barriers we determined, we provided our sponsors with the following recommendations:

• Redesigning the digital on boarding process

• Integrate real-time human support

• Expand on available language options

• Improve awareness through outreach

• Humanize the digital experience

The full research paper outlining our full process and detailed findings can be found here: City of Reykjavík Digital Services Study