When you lead with community, the design solves itself.
The problem isn't design — it's Mid-Market
Thirty percent of storefronts on Market Street between 5th and Van Ness sit empty. The ones that are occupied are fighting — rising rents, foot traffic that vanished after COVID, the narrative that "Mid-Market is a lost cause." The galleries, the old shops, the community organizations are still there, still trying — but nobody knows it. The underneath problems: vacant storefronts with no activation; arts organizations and small businesses priced out or struggling; street-level safety concerns that keep people away; a story about Mid-Market that doesn't match the community actually living there; and no structured way for people to participate in making the neighborhood better.
I sat in a talk by Urban Alchemy about their work on Mid-Market — community care, humane practices, long-term thinking — and something clicked. The right question wasn't "what app should I build?" It was: How might we make community participation in Mid-Market beautiful, visible, and regular?
The thinking — find what's already beautiful
My first design decision wasn't "what app should I build?" It was "what's already working here that I'm not seeing?" I looked at San Francisco neighborhoods that feel alive: the Castro's colored crosswalks, the murals, kids drawing hopscotch on asphalt, neighbors patching sidewalk holes with mosaics, people reclaiming corners. All of it is people saying: this corner matters, and I'm going to make it beautiful. But there's a constraint — art without permission is vandalism. Paint a corner in secret and it might get painted over, and nobody knows it's there, so the beauty becomes invisible. That's when The Pulse crystallized: give people a frictionless way to register a corner for beautification, send that registration straight to the city for approval, and — once approved — mark the corner on a public map the whole neighborhood can find, celebrate, and be inspired by.
The design — permission + visibility + community
For locals (the doers): a simple form on The Pulse website. Tell us about your corner — what you want to beautify, what your vision is — and submit. It goes directly to the city clerk for approval. Once approved, your corner is on the map: official, protected, visible. For visitors and neighbors (the discoverers): a map of approved corners, a treasure hunt through Mid-Market, stories about the oldest landmarks on the street, and the businesses still open. The real magic is that people don't just look — they see someone else's corner and think I could do that; I have a corner too. That's the ritual that changes how a place feels.
The constraint that mattered
I built The Pulse in 3 hours at the Art & Tech hackathon — and it won. Time pressure was a feature: it kept me focused on what actually mattered — the corner-registration flow and the map. I didn't perfect widget design or fiddle with animations. I made sure contrast met WCAG standards and that information disclosure was progressive, not overwhelming — and then I shipped it. The dashboard is raw, and that rawness doesn't matter, because the function is clear and the idea is solid. Three hours to prove that community participation is the product — not engagement metrics.
What happened next
The most exciting part happened after the hackathon. Inspired by the Urban Alchemy team and by real success stories from local businesses and organizations, I thought: this shouldn't stay a hackathon project. So right now I'm in conversations with SF city government and community organizations about streamlining the approval process and making The Pulse real — not a prototype, but real infrastructure for community participation.
The takeaway
When you start with community need instead of technology, the design becomes obvious. Instead of "what app can I build?" ask "what's the real barrier to participation here?" Instead of "how do I maximize engagement?" ask "how do I make it easy for people to do the thing they already want to do?" The Pulse is a dashboard — but it's not about the dashboard. It's about permission, visibility, and ritual: a neighborhood saying we're not done, we're just getting started.