Why You Should Apply for the Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge — An Interview with Hana Sutch of Go Jauntly

Maria Geftar, Senior Policy Officer for Technology at the GLA, sat down with Hana Sutch, Co-Founder and CEO of Go Jauntly, a discovery and way-finding app for walking and winner of the 2018 Civic Innovation Challenge, to talk about their journey since the programme last year and why it’s an opportunity for tech startups in London.

The Civic Innovation Challenge is the Mayor’s flagship technology innovation programme. In partnership with the Social Tech Trust and Microsoft, the Civic Innovation Challenge brings together London’s public sector and large private organisations with innovative tech companies seeking to solve some of London’s biggest challenges. The programme not only delivers benefits to Londoners, but also offers an unprecedented route to market for tech start-ups — a unique chance to access the insight, expertise, cutting-edge data and pilot sites.

Last year, City Hall ran seven challenges spanning areas such as active travel, creating culturally representative dementia resources, electric vehicle charging, and tackling loneliness. This year the Mayor is looking for solutions to tackle the housing crisis, make freight more efficient and counter violent extremism online.

The 2018 Challenge resulted in the creation of entirely new products and has constituted the beginning of long-term relationships for several companies. Go Jauntly was one of them — and has, through the Civic Innovation Challenge, teamed up with Transport for London (TfL) to encourage more Londoners to walk as part of their everyday journey.

Can you tell me a little more about what Go Jauntly does? What are you trying to solve? Why are you solving it?

Rapid urbanisation, inactivity, sedentary behaviour and stressful modern lifestyles cost global economies billions. Climate breakdown and air pollution are costing us the earth. Transport makes up 27% of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, with road transport being the main culprit here. By walking, cycling and using public transport more in our daily lives we can all help halt devastating levels of global warming.

In an increasingly connected world, we are losing touch. A two-hour ‘dose’ of nature significantly boosts health and helps maintain mental wellbeing. The physical and mental health benefits of time spent in parks, woods or the beach is well known. According to the Nuffield Trust, the number of 4 to 24 year olds reporting a longstanding mental health issue has increased six fold in the last 20 years. The Go Jauntly app paves the way for the first of its kind smartphone “Green Prescription”.

What exactly is it that Go Jauntly is doing to combat the problem? How does the product or service you provide tie into the equation?

Go Jauntly is a health and wellness company working to increase walking, mobility and outdoor adventures. We have an award-winning walking app that promotes walking for leisure and active travel.

You can find local walks created by the people who love and know them, create your own routes and share them with your friends, family and the growing Go Jauntly community. Encouraging walking and active travel is one of the easiest ways to combat this crisis but not enough is being done to attract new audiences to this pastime.

Transport for London has a target of 80% of all journeys in London to be made on foot, by cycle or public transport by 2041.

Our vision is, whichever city in the world you’re in, you can open the Go Jauntly app and find inspiring nature-filled walking routes within a 2-mile radius.

How did you come across the Civic Innovation Challenge and what made you want to apply?

We found out about the programme through our network at Geovation, Ordnance Survey’s innovation arm. We were a part of a previous cohort and are part of their alumni. When we saw the challenges, we knew that it was something we didn’t want to miss out on being a part of!

What was your experience of the Civic Innovation Challenge like? What was the nature of your project, and what value did the programme provide for you?

We went in with an idea but within eight weeks from winning the Active Travel challenge, we ended up delivering:

● New Go Jauntly Walking Map which helps you find your way to any Transport for London station, cycle hire station or one of Go Jauntly’s curated walking trails.

● New TfL Walk London Network routes: The Capital Ring and The Jubilee Walkway.

● New bottom navigation to make it easier to discover new walking routes and access the Go Jauntly walking map and new analytics platform

● And a couple of stretch tasks such as adding availability to the Cycle-hire bays within the app

Did working with TfL open up opportunities for Go Jauntly that you didn’t anticipate?

I think we opened up opportunities both ways. We helped TfL benefit from the digitisation of other Walk London network routes and helped them glean valuable anonymised insights on walking behaviour.

From our perspective we increased customer reach, some great press and several introductions to business improvement districts and like-minded organisations.

The pilot ran from November 2018 through to end of January 2019 and our downloads grew by 1350% from the previous 2 months.

What was the most positive or successful element of your project as part of the CIC?

When we won, we didn’t realise that we would get the opportunity to work side-by-side with the Talk London team at the GLA and this was really invaluable for us as it meant we could work with user research specialists to conduct qualitative and quantitative studies and have help from the data science specialists to test the efficacy of our pilot. As a small business, user research can be costly so this really was a brilliant added bonus for us.

We ended up surveying 1437 Londoners via Talk London on their relationship with walking. We ran two incentivised pilot studies with 32 participants on brand new London walking content and the new station-to-station walking map made in collaboration with TfL.

What did you learn from the CIC?

We really enjoyed working directly with the team at TfL, they are a smart and engaged team and helped us access parts of the business that we wouldn’t normally be able to. We also gleaned a deeper understanding of the pressures public transport is under and the areas for which walking could be significantly improved.

Tell me about Go Jauntly’s journey since the CIC, what have you achieved?

It’s been quite busy to be honest.

Since participating in the Civic Innovation Challenge, we won a £41k grant from Innovate UK for a brand-new augmented reality feature, secured paid partnerships with a number of partners including Liz Earle Beauty Co, Southampton City Council and Norfolk County Council, got nominated for the Transport Award and received Apple’s coveted “App of the Day” award. We also reached +100k downloads which is super exciting for us!

What would you say to anyone considering applying for the CIC?

Go for it! Especially if you’re working in tech-for-good or consider yourselves to be a social impact company. It’s traditionally harder for startups or private organisations to work with the public sector and this approach is a more rapid way of working collaboratively them and by adopting a more agile and piloted approach it means that ideas and innovations can be gotten off the ground more easily and tested in a live environment. This enables a more evidence-based approach to solutions that meets the needs, concerns, questions and pain-points of Londoners.

Are you a startup with a tech solution that can help improve the lives of Londoners? Find out more and apply for this year’s Civic Innovation Challenge now: civicinnovation.london

Find out more about Go Jauntly and download the app!