Project Brief & Interview With Kirsty

At Zudu, we are passionate about helping our local community and making an impact through technology, which is why we were particularly excited about working on this project for Parish Nursing Dundee. We originally met with the project’s co-ordinator, Kirsty Nelson (who is also a full-time Parish Nurse at the Steeple Church), in the Autumn of 2021. We commenced the design stage of the project almost immediately and developed the first beta build of the apps in November 2021. Now that the project has wrapped up and the app has been live for 3 months, we caught up with Kirsty to hear about her project highlights:

What’s your favourite new feature of the app?

The whole app! I like how interactive it is and that you can bookmark services you use most often as it helps you find them more easily and lets you plan ahead. I also love the fact that you can opt to see only the services and events that are available at the time you’re using the app. Previously, it was just a list of services, whereas now you can explore events and services separately and even plan the journey from your location. I love the whole thing! It’s also very easy to change/update services on the admin side and makes it so simple to manage, e.g. if I need to update an email address, I can log in and update it in seconds and the changes are visible straight away. It’s also helped ease my concerns about working with a development agency as I feared I would require more technical knowledge to understand their processes but [Zudu] helped guide me along the way without the complex jargon.

How can people request new services or events to be added to the app?

There is a “contact us” section in the app which provides a specific email address for submitting a request. It’s monitored weekly and services can then be added to the app, usually within the same week.

What’s next for Dundee Recovery Road Map?

We are currently working with a printer and graphic designer to transform the information in the app into a booklet as digital poverty is a huge issue right now – especially in Dundee – so for people looking to access these services we want to have paper copies and posters available. They won’t include the food services as these change so regularly depending on volunteer availability, so we will primarily focus on our harm reduction and support services.

We’re due to go to print over the summer and materials will be made available soon after across community centres, GP clinics, and other NHS services. We’ll also introduce QR codes for people to download the app (if they can), so these are really the next big things. We’ve also had interest from other cities who want to have a similar app and it’s amazing that others are seeing the benefit!