Kitchener changes the game with new website and customizable MyKitchener portal

The MyKitchener portal is a home screen for every Kitchener resident, offering a personalized experience through a customizable collection of widgets - each with a modern design that scales to any size of device. These widgets let residents build a home screen with the information that matters to them – neighbourhood events, service notifications, opportunities to get more involved in the community. It’s a tool that becomes something unique for every family in Kitchener. With a secure MyKitchener account, residents can:

• Customize their dashboard with content that is most important to the user
• Receive notifications when new information is available on the portal, including snow events, skating and swimming events, road closures and more
• View information about multiple properties in one place
• View and pay property tax and utility bills
• View road closures near their address
• View upcoming swim times at their local pool
• Find a time to skate at their local arena
• View news and upcoming events
• Watch a council meeting and download meeting minutes and agendas

“The MyKitchener website and portal will forever change the way citizens interact with the City,” said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic. “Kitchener, through its Digital Kitchener initiatives, has become synonymous with cutting edge technology and now our online service experience will match. Information and services are now more accessible and interactive than ever.”

The MyKitchener portal is the product of extensive public consultation with the local community. During the 2018 Customer Service Review, residents said they wanted to see more city services online and that they’d prefer to access and use them in a single place.

The City has also redeveloped its online presence from the ground up, incorporating best-in-class web design practices to give Kitchener residents the information they’re looking for right away. The MyKitchener experience includes a new website with plain language content. By lowering the reading level of the website from college to grade seven, the City is making their website more accessible and easier to understand. Content on the website is structured so that voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google can use website content to answer popular resident questions. The City hopes that their new website and MyKitchener portal will empower residents to self-serve on their schedule.

“Our philosophy was always that we weren’t just building this for residents, we were building it with them. We checked in with them again and again, through user testing, to make sure we were getting it right,” said Ward 1 Councillor Scott Davey. “Even now, we’ve intentionally chosen to launch an almost-finished product so that our citizens can again test it out and tell us what can be improved right away.”

The Digital Kitchener Lab at Communitech played a key role in supporting the design and user experience of MyKitchener. In the early days of the project, the Digital Kitchener lab hosted its first design sprint to explore ideas like voice to text search navigation, which is a new feature included in the website redesign based on user feedback. The design sprint offered a unique opportunity to prototype early concepts with residents before developing a full solution.

The website and MyKitchener portal are live, continuously evolving resources that will incorporate resident feedback, adapt to new programs and incorporate new features over time. The City is asking residents to participate in the ongoing development of the site and portal by registering an account and providing their feedback directly on the website or through the share feedback button inside the portal.

Residents can find the new website at www.kitchener.ca and create a MyKitchener account on the website or at mykitchener.kitchener.ca