How Might We

Improve the process associated with providing fair child support orders so that officials find it simple, parents trust the result, and ultimately the child recieves a fair support order

How Might We

Improve the process associated with providing fair child support orders so that officials find it simple, parents trust the result, and ultimately the child recieves a fair support order

CHILD SUPPORT CALCULATOR

Service Design

State of Michigan

MY ROLE & SCOPE
Design & Research Co-Lead
Collaborated on cross-functional team
Impact across state of Michigan
Some prior and existing tools 

ACTIVITY OVERVIEW
– Primary Research
– Empathy Interviews
– Service Blueprint
– Personas
– Interactive Prototype
– Joint Application Development
(JAD) Working Sessions
– Implementation
– Continued Support

OPPORTUNITY

The opacity between inputs and outputs to create a fair child support order was creating major challenges and tension between everyone involved with the process. A lot of the issues could be traced back to failings, or lack of, current tools for those gathering information and putting together the orders. There was plenty of room for improvement spanning from simple usability improvements, centralization of features into one tool, and most importantly calculation trasparency where possible. 

APPROACH

As a team we took turns conducting inverviews, worked on making sense of the findings through a service blueprint and personas, and created an interactive prototype to get in front of our Joint Application Design group (JAD). The JAD was made up of folks who were currently working with parents and creating orders–they would be the user of the improved tool we delivered to their team. They were skeptical at first but we built trust and they were very engaged throughout the entire development process. 

OUTCOME

We launched a new child support calculator that was easy to us and increased transparency through making sure state workers were able to clearly understand how inputs were impacting the calculation. This transparency ultimately helped them to better explain those details to parents who often demanded anwers. Also due to close collaboration with the client and the JAD, everyone felt that feedback had been well incorporated. The group even wanted to hire designers as work ended!

Scroll down for a detailed look at the process and assets created throughout the project including :

RESEARCH
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
PERSONAS
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
JAD WORKSHOPS
RESEARCH

We conducted 21 empathy interviews between individuals who would be using the child support calculator and those who were generally associated with the work – details to the right.

This initial discovery work helped during collaboration sessions hosted with state workers. During those sessions we cleaned up a working service blueprint and began discussion the ideal child support calculation process and tools. 

What we found right away was that although a child support calculator existed it was not a calculator at all… it was essentially a static form. They were using a plethora of tools that we hoped to weave into a new version of the current “calculator” to make their workflow much easier.

Research Road Trips

Co-Creation Sessions with State Workers

SERVICE BLUEPRINT

We created a current state Service Blueprint to uncover, and align upon, areas of opportunity within the child support calculation process as well as pain points, redundancies, and generally unnecessary steps.


We used a future state Service blueprint to make note of concept solutions we had in mind as well as steps we believed we could remove. 

Current State Blueprint

Future State Blueprint

Current, Future State Blueprints Side by Side

PERSONAS & ACTOR MAP

Based on our research we identified two key stakeholders: a prosecuting attorney and friend of the court.

We also created an actor map to depict how we saw various roles working together. It was important to understand nuances between various groups for us to be able to see how updates to process and tools would affect the full group of stakeholders.

Actor Map to Highlight Connections

INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE

I took the lead on creating an interactive prototype to visualize a re-designed child support calculator. This prototype would be used weekly in a weekly JAD, joint application development, workshops with individuals who would be using the tool once it went live. Essentially these were co-creation sessions that helped us iterate on our prototype. 

I identified tactically what changes we could make and how we would implement said changes before our next JAD workshop.

 

Sample of Interactive Prototype

Review all 40 states / pages in detail on Axshare – same password as portfolio

JAD WORKSHOPS

To provide a little more insight on these workshops: during each workshop we reviewed our most recent iteration of the tool with new functionality and explanation of updates with actual users to provide feedback. At first the group was very skeptical of change – they saw that our work would change their workflow and were not sure how helpful the changes would be.

As the team got to know our group and heard our rationale behind each change they realized that we were in fact trying to make their day to day easier and to complement their current workflows.

We received invaluable feedback on the tool once the team opened up, and at a certain point, they even began asking when the tool would be live for them to use. 


What was also fascinating was how quickly the group took to our discussion board within the interactive prototype – asking and, in many cases, answering their own questions. It was huge to be able to speak with them in person and then have their conversations continue online. This gave us added insight that helped us rapidly iterate. 

IMPLEMENTATION CONSULTING

Post delivery of an interactive prototype with detailed annotations, the client continued to want to learn more about design. We truly opened their eyes to a new way of working and a while after we had moved on to new work within the studio they ended up hiring their own designer on site!

Natalie Kuhn

A believer that many of the world’s problems can be solved using a designer’s mindset and methodology. Hopeful that I can help to create change by starting within my local community.

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