Digital Transformation to Get People the Services They Deserve

After conducting stakeholder interviews and reviewing existing data, we adjusted the design challenge, primarily focusing on three key areas:

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• Helping people understand the functions of the Office of the Attorney General.
• Making it clear when and how to file a written consumer complaint to the mediation unit online and enabling OAG teams to quickly take action after the complaint is filed. 
• Communicating the vision of the elected Attorney General and how the office is executing against their vision.

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We prioritized these key areas based on our understanding of the greatest need for the greatest number of people. Then, we validated these assumptions during the kickoff with stakeholders.

During this phase of the design process we wanted to create a shared understanding of the problem space, the users, the user journeys and potential experiments or hypothesis that would remove pain points.

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After we gained even more clarity about how we could make the biggest impact, we honed in on this design challenge during the define stage: 

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Make it clear when and how to file a written consumer complaint to the mediation unit online and enable OAG teams to quickly take action after the complaint is filed. 

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Design artifacts included: 

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• Research Insights
• User Mental Model
• A Service Blueprint
• Low-Fidelity Prototypes
• A Plain Language Guide

Research Insights

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Through unmoderated usability testing, surveys and diary studies, I learned: 

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• People often struggle to find help on the OAG website because they look for familiar and relatable terms, such as "dispute with a landlord" instead of "file a complaint."
• The website offers too many choices, which can confuse users and make it harder for them to find the help they need, leading to frustration and abandoned sessions.
• When users are provided with clear guidance on how to express their concerns, the time frame for filing a complaint, and what to expect afterward, they feel more confident and are more likely to successfully navigate the process.
• Without this confidence, users may abandon the process altogether or resort to calling the switchboard for assistance.

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The research yielded a significant finding: by implementing systems to collect organized data on the reasons why people call the OAG switchboard, the team could gain valuable insights. A two-week diary study revealed clear patterns not just in what people were calling about, but also why they were calling.

Service Blueprint

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I created a service blueprint to capture the thoughts and actions of consumers and internal teams throughout the consumer complaint journey. It then identified opportunities to eliminate pain points and reduce the workload on internal teams.

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Low-Fidelity Prototypes

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The product designer created low-fidelity prototypes focused on these opportunity areas: 

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• Get people to topical pages that inform and guide decisions.


• Help people prepare to share their position or story.

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Proposed next steps included rapid iteration of these prototypes, conducing research with potential users to inform these iterations.

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The Plain Language Guide complimented the low-fidelity prototypes and research insights, giving the OAG team clear, actionable ways to improve their website immediately.

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This project followed a “discovery sprint” model, an approach that was beginning to be recognized as a best practice at USDS when I was doing my tour of service. Discovery sprints are a rev of the OG Design Sprint first introduced by Google Ventures. The key differences are:

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• Discovery sprints can be 4 to 8 weeks. 
• This framework is often useful for service design projects that include examining policy that informs delivery requirements.
• How the public can be engaged during a discovery sprint through user research is sometimes also intertwined with policy. 
• The deliverables can also be report or presentation heavy with less emphasis on delivering clickable or working prototypes that have been validated with the business and users. 

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The purpose of a discovery sprint is to identify root causes, issues, and opportunities, not to solve them in this time window.

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Getting Started

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After conducting stakeholder interviews and reviewing existing data, we adjusted the project to fit a discovery sprint timeline. Three key service delivery areas surfaced:‍

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• Helping people understand the functions of the Office of the Attorney General.
• Making it clear when and how to file a written consumer complaint to the mediation unit online and enabling OAG teams to quickly take action after the complaint is filed.
• Communicating the vision of the elected Attorney General and how the office is executing against their vision.

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We prioritized these key areas based on our understanding of the greatest need for the greatest number of people.

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During a kickoff workshop, we validated these focus areas with the people that deliver services for the OAG. This helped us create alignment and set expectations from day one on where we would start to zoom in given we didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. 

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In the beginning, the team also focused on norming as a team, setting roles and responsibilities, along with creating a project plan. 

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Understand‍

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I designed a mixed-methods research plan that accounted for the opportunities and risks associated with the discovery sprint model.

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One of the biggest risks was we didn’t have time to conduct multiple rounds of research. To combat this, I launched parallel methods with an assumption that the data we got from the different methods would not be equal. Some methods would return valuable insight whereas others would not. In a different scenario, you might tweak your approach when the data quality was poor initially. We didn’t have time for that. 

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One of the approaches I designed in order that we better understand what information and services people needed, had the team that answered the main OAG hotline keep diaries of their calls. After each call, the call was logged in an online survey designed to capture key details about the call including the needs, behaviors and attitudes of the caller. These call “diary entries” ended up producing the richest dataset.  

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Other research methods included a collaborative workshop, surveys, and task analysis.

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Collaborative Workshop to Co-Create a Service Blueprint

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To understand the opportunities to remove pain points during the consumer complaint process, I facilitated a virtual workshop with the Consumer Protection Mediation Team to define the touch points, channels and opportunities along the consumer complaint journey for complaints handled by the mediation unit. This not only facilitated conversation amongst the team about how they work internally, it also gave space for the team to really think about the constituents.

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We established a mental model based on these conversations and other findings from usability testing.

Mental Model for People Looking for Help with a Dispute

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This workshop findings from the customer-facing and back office teams were combined with survey data, click test analysis findings and customer care diaries to create the service blueprint highlighting opportunities.

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Complete Overview

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• Diary Studies: 458 calls to the OAG Switchboard Team were captured to understand why people call and how they get help.
• Click Analysis: We asked people where they would click to get help on the OAG website, as well as, other OAG websites.
• Landscape Analysis: We looked at all 50 OAG websites to better understand how other office’s organize their information and position themselves to the public.
• Surveys: We launched intercept surveys on the file a complaint page and on the submission page. The intercept surveys did not capture significant data to report back to the team.

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What We Learned

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• The top places people were referred to when they called to get help.
• The top (90% of the time) tasks people needed to complete on the OAG website.
• The perceptions people had of the OAG and the services it provides.
• What updates should be made to labels and the calls to action to make it easier to find information.
• What information organization, hierarchy, and interaction best practices would improve the usability of the site.

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Define

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‍Experiments were identified and developed into low-fidelity prototypes and/or wireframes.

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Decide

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‍The team synthesized the findings and presented the story back to stakeholders and sprint sponsors. With the opportunities defined, the OAG team can now decide what the biggest priorities are to move into the next phase of design.

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Now that the team has discovered opportunities:

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• To make core services on the website findable and usable.
• To identify services in high demand and move resources or revisit the service design of those services to optimize delivery.
• To reduce the burden on staff by making information more clear and actionable.

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The team will begin to define solutions, moving from low-fidelity designs to high-fidelity designs testing with users along the way.

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This foundational work will inform success metrics that’ll support decision making as we look to combine intuition with data to deliver the experience people deserve.

Establishing a Baseline

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Often, when you start a digital transformation project there isn’t a solid baseline for customer experience (CX) or user experience (UX) metrics that can give you signal on the biggest user pain points.

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To get a holistic view of the end-to-end experience the OAG provides, we first needed to identify the core digital and non-digital interactions people have with the OAG, then create a plan for understanding the user’s perspective and behaviors as they completed these interactions. 

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[Different Context, But Related: Measuring, Understanding and Designing Every Interaction]

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"Ride Along" Partners

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We would not have been successful if it wasn’t for the OAG team partnership. From day one, the team was a true “ride along” partner and not just standing on the sidelines.

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Specifically, their willingness to be flexible with how they work, in order that we start capturing structured information, was a game changer. The small customer care team, specifically, captured the details of nearly 500 calls in less than 10 days. 

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This information helped us:

• Identify the core services people need
• Identify pain points with finding information online
• Opportunities to gain operational efficiencies

Researcher & Coordinator: Laura Cochran

Product Designer: Adam Moorman

Content Strategist: Andrew Hearst

Engagement Manager: Lara Kohl

Product Strategist: Sonja Marziano