The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is infamous in the United States for being a terrible experience. For this SCADPro collaboration, Deloitte approached us to reimagine the DMV experience. Working as a remote team across different cities, we conducted research to create robust solutions and present them in a manner fit for Deloitte to deliver to their clients.
I was the Art Director for this project, overseeing multiple aspects including the visual identity, design system, web and app design, presentation and motion media. I played an integral role in building the vision around which our solutions were implemented. I coordinated across the graphic design, UX design, and motion media teams to ensure consistency in visuals and participated in design sprints to brainstorm implementable and creative solutions to user pain points
Our team of 16 people consisted of 2 professors, and students across different majors including Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Service Design, and Motion Design. This made it a very unique experience in terms of the sheer amount of creative minds involved and made collaboration fun and stimulating.
We started out with quite a bit of preliminary information that was shared by the Deloitte team. This included stakeholder maps, common user cases, and a list of priorities. After we all were familiar with this information, our research team conducted their own primary and secondary research.
Our primary research included observational studies of different DMVs, Interviews with a range of customers of DMVs, surveys and card sorting exercises to understand the mental maps of our users.
Around this research, we constructed user archetypes, personas, and user journey maps. We also made sure we covered the wide range of people that interact with the DMV with particular focus on special needs. For instance, here is a journey map to renew credentials for two different types of users:
We created a comprehensive web app, mobile app, design system, vision video and process book including all the conducted research. Our solutions included some practical ways to address common pain points such as a wait time indicator on the website so users can plan ahead for their DMV visit. We also included some ambitious solutions such as home vision and knowledge tests. We also made sure to make the experience more human wherever we could. Existing DMV websites were dull and difficult to navigate. We included imagery and easy navigation to reduce frustration and bring delight to the experience.
