If you live in the U.S. it’s likely that you’ve visited the Department of Motor Vehicles at some point in your lifetime. Whether it was to get a driver’s license, pay a parking ticket, register a vehicle, etc., the DMV offers several services that involve in-person visits by residents.
For some residents, traveling to a DMV can be difficult or inconvenient, and waiting at the DMV can be time-consuming. During the height of COVID-19, in-person visits were even more problematic as they endangered the lives of many residents.
In March 2020 the New York State government created a COVID-19 Technology “SWAT” Team, consisting of partnerships with tech companies to work on critical projects to respond to the pandemic. One of those partnerships was with Google.org — the charitable arm of Google that provides technology, funding, and volunteers to support nonprofits and social enterprises.
Google.org provided a team of ten Fellows to work six months full-time to help New York residents find and access critical COVID-19 related information. As of the Fellows, I pitched and lead a UX design sprint for the New York DMV.
The problem
On March 21 the DMV announced that all offices statewide would be closed until further notice due to the pandemic. DMV customers were advised to only visit an office for urgent matters, and use services that are available online.
But not all services are digital, and some of the existing online services were particularly challenging for less tech savvy people or those who can only pay in cash.
“We need to keep people out of the office for the convenience for our customers, but also more importantly because of what we’re going through right now for public safety.”
Partnering with the NY State UX team, we came up with the following sprint challenge statement:
How might we virtualize in-person services to reduce person-to-person contact while optimizing for ease and efficiency?
The Design Sprint
Many NY State Government employees had never experienced or heard of a Design Sprint before. With the help of the internal NY State UX team, I pitched the process to DMV leadership and stakeholders as a lightweight, efficient way to test many solutions with little engineering effort. This immediately captured their interest.
The NY State UX team helped us quickly identify key stakeholders and gain agency support. The core sprint team consisted of:
Fellows from the Google.org team
Members of the NY State UX team
DMV staff and leadership
Employees that work in the physical DMV offices
Because of the very large size of the Sprint (20+ sprinters), we split up into four sub groups during most of the sprint. An added challenge was working together remotely, with few of the participants never having met each other and working from multiple timezones.
Day 1 - Understand
We started by learning about the problem space through:
Lightning talks
Writing down “How Might We’s”
Affinity diagramming
Typically we would use sticky notes, markers, white boards, etc. to do an activity like affinity mapping, but instead we used Google Slides as our primary collaboration tool. This was a great “blank canvas” with a gentle learning curve, and a tool that all participants could access.
At the end of day 1, we decided to focus on the problem area of reducing in-person traffic at DMV offices.
We used a “dump and clump” format in Google Slides to identify key problem areas related to COVID-19
Day 2 - Map
The next step was mapping user journeys for our problem area. In sub teams, we mapped subgoals, tasks, tool/technology touch points, and pain points for different use cases. I helped facilitate group discussions and ensured each group stayed on task.
One of the proposed solutions to reducing in-person traffic at DMV offices was allowing for eye exams to be taken virtually. This was on of the proposed journeys.
An ideal user journey for taking an eye exam virtually.
Day 3 - Sketch
Building on the work from days 1 & 2, on day 3 we did “Crazy 8s”, followed by two rounds of detailed solution sketching.
“It was fun seeing a UX design process in action since I never have before!”
“I really enjoyed working with this team. There was an overall feeling that your voice was important and really enjoyed working in groups which allowed us to get creative and feed off of each other.”
An ideal user journey for taking an eye exam virtually.
Equalizing Technology 💻
Google may have extensive access to technology — but not all organizations do. Especially while working from home, many sprint participants did not have access to a webcam or corporate laptop. We had a mix of cell phones, personal laptops, desktops, and other devices to participate in the sprint.
To alleviate this issue, we had a dedicated program manager who was present throughout the sprint to help us deal with logistics and mechanics. Our program manager cleared significant technical hurdles, from onboarding participants to Google Meet, moving digital sticky notes around, and even helping sprinters with their home laptop set up.
Days 4 & 5 - Validate
We used Validately as our platform to recruit participants and run usability testing. We were able to find high quality participants in a short amount of time, however the participant pool didn’t map exactly to our target users.
Validately users are experienced testers, younger in demographic, and more comfortable with technology. Whereas our target users are older citizens, non-native English speakers, and people with limited technology access.
We did gain some valuable feedback from the testing, which we used to iterate and refine our final recommendations.
Screenshot of the Google Slides prototype we showed to end users
Day 6 and beyond
On the final day we worked together to incorporate the results into our designs, and created a presentation detailing the process and outputs. Each sprint participant had an opportunity to present to an impressive audience of leaders, including the head of Google.org, the NY State CTO, and the DMV Commissioner. It was rewarding to watch our sprinters, especially the DMV window agents, who initially were intimated by the design sprint process present their work proudly.
Despite a few challenges, everyone involved felt that this was a very successful design sprint. We received a lot of positive feedback from stakeholders, and many participants mentioned to us afterwards they plan to incorporate design sprints into their future projects.