Right Time

Introduction

Residents with tickets cannot properly manage them and do not always know how to prevent a similar violation in the future. They consequently accumulate debt and feel desperate to solve the problem.

Right Time is your assistance for settling violation tickets and avoiding receive more of them. This product goes a step further than the existing City-of-Chicago website. Right Time helps people avoid penalties and future infractions, by offering personalized suggestions, step-by-step navigation, and assistance with the next steps.

Team

Yuanyuan Hu - Service Designer
Mark Jones - Design Strategist

Git Bash

What is our end goal?

We want to advance equity in non-moving violations. Here are the reasons:

trap

Many residents are trapped by transportation tickets from the City.

“I lost my car and I lost my job. Now my family can’t eat over a parking ticket.”
 “I am 64 and I’m still on my payment plan of $1300.”

lost trust

The city lost trust from residents and has a decreasing payment rate.

"The city is a bunch of fraud; they don't tell you (of your ticket increase) until it doubles."
 "It's all about the money. No other city is like this. Chicago is all about the money. You can get a ticket for anything."

What leads to the problems?

“Sometimes it's just a small mistake, but bills can eventually get extremely high and no one can afford it.”

Git Bash

After synthesizing our primary research, the pattern popped up. It shows that residents usually get trapped with this system by rather their little mistake, or confusion of the traffic rules -- some of these rules are even unreasonable. This little accident gives residents an initial non-moving violation ticket. Without dealing with it properly, the ticket can easily double, the penalty will come, eventually, debts become unaffordable.

The City of Chicago claims that they are trying hard to help these residents, while the residents don’t feel the help is available.

 

Why is it challenging?

This is a systematic problem, we wanted to solve that from behavior and social level to help residents and rebuild the trust.

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Where we should intervene?

Take action before things get worse

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Most of our participants thoughts the fine of the non-moving violation is too high, while people with different income levels react so differently to the same amount of penalty. Unfortunately, for those who was already struggling with paying the initial ticket, more bill is coming.

How can we help?

Right Time helps people avoid penalties and future infractions, by offering personalized suggestions, step-by-step navigation, and assistance with the next steps.

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Practical Suggestions


By scanning the QR code or providing a driver's license, residents can directly pay for their tickets, get tailored and practical suggestions to avoid similar violations, and get help if they haven't yet decided whether to pay.

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Navigation through Choices


Residents can choose their preferred next step to deal with a ticket. Along with the action they choose, we will assist them through the whole process by providing relevant information and reminding them of important dates.

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Assistance with Next Steps


Residents will get personalized messages and reminders from the assistant, including the due date, important links, and relevant ticket information.

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Reflections & More

- Non-moving violation ticket and its payment engage many stakeholders and was very complex from the beginning, so we simplified that as a two-side model, and focusing on the main conflicts to better solve the problem.

- Since the service is related to the penalty, obviously, many residents are quite resistant to that. No one is 100% rational people, so we should consider their emotions and how will emotions affect behavior - Behavior economics will play a key role in this situation.

- Dealing with conflicting situations like this, we should not be just engaged with fixing what is wrong, but we should always be aware of how can we make it even better.