I’ve always been a big fan of scratching your own itch opens a new window . My latest itch was the insane amount of parking violations that I see everyday in Buenos Aires, near our office opens a new window .

We decided to build a simple tool that would allow anyone with a Twitter opens a new window account to report a parking violation. All you need to do is submit a geolocated tweet and a couple of photos (as evidence!)

Here is an example:

Ah, ¿no se puede estacionar en paradas de colectivo? Ya fueee... #InfractoresBA opens a new window pic.twitter.com/XXmu1pdAib opens a new window

— E r n e s t o (@_nesto) April 18, 2016 opens a new window

You can check out this tool over here: http://www.infractoresba.com.ar opens a new window

This page shows all the parking violations reported by users to @InfractoresBA opens a new window or with the #InfractoresBA opens a new window hashtag. It’s as simple as that.

We focused on making the feature of reporting a parking violation as simple as possible:

• There’s no application to download
• No need to register to a new site
• No need to fill out 20 different fields

I know that there are other alternatives to report a violation in Buenos Aires:

• An official Android and iOS application opens a new window
• An official web page with a long form opens a new window

But I wanted to make it even easier for someone to report a parking violation. I am also a big fan of (good) user experience.

I didn’t see the need to register an account to report a violation. In fact, I think it’s something that will discourage people from reporting a violation. Why not use an existing account in Twitter opens a new window ?

As a user of our tool, and as someone who usually rides his bicycle to work, I wanted to stop, take a photo, tweet it, and move on.

Just like this:

La gente que estaciona así es un peligro @InfractoresBA opens a new window pic.twitter.com/DGNfrQvopZ opens a new window

— E r n e s t o (@_nesto) April 4, 2016 opens a new window

There is still some work to be done. That’s why we have made this tool open source opens a new window . We are open to suggestions, bug reports, code contributions and general feedback: https://github.com/ombulabs/infractores opens a new window

As always, we developed an MVP opens a new window that can later be extended and refined. We hope to learn from how the community uses this tool.

Our vision is for someone to pick up this tool, configure a city and a vertical, and start using it to track any kind of violation.

In our case, we wanted to improve the situation with parking violations in Buenos Aires. We hope this tool will lead to those who park illegally being fined and encourage more people to park better.

However you could easily configure this tool to track loud noise infractions in Chicago, or crime in Berlin (in terms of crime it might be tricky to capture the image/video to use as evidence, but it’s a possibility)

This is not a commercial project. We don’t expect to make money, we just want people to use it to improve their communities.

All feedback is welcome, whether you like it, hate it or spot an issue opens a new window !