FixIT: housing repairs, reported in pictures.
A picture-first web app, built through Techies in Residence, that lets refugee families report a housing repair without reading or writing English.
FixIT is a picture-first web app that lets refugee families in Northern Ireland report a housing repair to their landlord without needing to read or write English. We designed and built it with Barnardo’s NI Refugee Support Service through the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland’s Techies in Residence programme, funded by Comic Relief.
- Partner
- Barnardo’s Northern Ireland, Refugee Support Service
- Programme
- Techies in Residence 2021, Community Foundation NI
- Funder
- Comic Relief, Tech for Good seed fund
- Timeline
- Spring 2021 residency, live by December 2021
- Languages
- English, Arabic, Somali, Pashto, Dari, Ukrainian, Russian
- Live at
- fixit.rentals
A broken boiler, and a wall of English.
Since 2015, Barnardo’s NI has supported families resettled in Belfast under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme. Most of them are Syrian families placed in private rented housing. When something breaks in the house, the process for getting it fixed assumes you can phone a repairs line, describe the fault in English, and follow it up in writing.
For a family who arrived a few months ago, that is a wall. In practice, a Barnardo’s support worker was ending up as the go-between for every dripping tap and broken smoke alarm. That work took time away from the things only a support worker can do, and left families dependent on someone else to be heard in their own home.
A digital solution represents a step-change for refugee and indeed non-English speaking families who want nothing more than get back to a sense of dignity, autonomy and independence they once knew before the Syrian conflict ripped their lives apart.
Geoff Baird, Barnardo’s Northern Ireland
What we built
A mobile-first web app: no download, no account, no password. Open the link or scan the QR code, and work through four screens.
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Pick the room
Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, or a catch-all for everything else. Big tiles, one tap.
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Tap the problem
Every room has its own set of icons: hob, cooker, fridge, smoke alarm, damp, window, toilet, shower, taps. No typing.
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Add a photo, or don’t
A picture of the fault helps the landlord send the right tradesperson. Nothing to show? Tap “No evidence” and move on.
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Say how to reach you
Email, phone or WhatsApp, plus the postcode and address. FixIT sends a structured report straight to the landlord or managing agent.
Decisions that mattered.
Pictures before words
The whole interface is built on iconography. Language selection is the first and almost the only text-heavy screen. Everything after that has to make sense to someone who has never used the app and cannot read the labels. That was the brief we set ourselves, and the one the Barnardo’s team held us to.
Meet people where they already are
WhatsApp is how a lot of families already talk to each other and to the services around them, so it is a first-class contact option in FixIT rather than an afterthought. The QR code is there for the same reason: a code stuck up in the house is easier to find than a bookmark on someone else’s phone.
Built to be handed over
A Techies in Residence product has to outlive the residency. FixIT runs on a plain, well-supported stack that a charity can host and maintain without a developer on retainer, and it is still live and being used today.
Thursday 20 May 2021.
Techies in Residence pairs a tech partner with a voluntary or community organisation for a residency, then the pairs pitch for Comic Relief seed funding at a public showcase. Ours was virtual, because of the pandemic, and Sync NI ran a piece beforehand asking the public to vote on the seven finalists. Barnardo’s and Invisible Building were listed as a “bilingual reporting platform for directly addressing housing issues between landlord and tenant”.
Following the showcase, Barnardo’s pitched for and received a Comic Relief seed fund award through the Community Foundation to take FixIT further: video evidence alongside photos, research into how landlords and tenants actually communicate once a report lands, automated “how to” guides for the small things a tenant can fix themselves, translated terms and privacy notices, and the groundwork to roll the tool out to other refugee services across the UK and Ireland.
Still live. Still used.
FixIT went live at fixit.rentals in late 2021. It launched with the languages the Belfast families needed, Arabic first. Today it offers seven, including Ukrainian and Russian. Barnardo’s lists the FixIT app in its housing guidance for refugee families as one of the ways to report a repair to their housing provider.
It is a small tool. It is also exactly the kind of tool we think tech for good should be: specific, unglamorous, built with the people who use it, and still working years later.
Working on something similar for a charity or community organisation? Have a look at our digital consultancy for charities, see how we approach web app & MVP development, or get in touch.
The FixIT story, as it happened
Written along the way, as it happened. Nothing tidied up afterwards.
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FixIT Is Live: Report a Housing Repair Without a Word of English
FixIT is live at fixit.rentals: pick the room, tap the problem, add a photo, and the landlord gets a clear report in English.
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This Thursday: Our Techies in Residence Pitch with Barnardo’s NI
Invisible Building and Barnardo’s NI pitch FixIT, a picture-first housing-repair tool for refugee families, at the Techies in Residence showcase.