Pressure Project 1 by Jenna Ko
Posted: January 27, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »When I first heard the terms “congestion” and “intervention”, the first thing that came into my mind was BMV driving test that I took a couple months ago.
Although there were 48 agencies across the state, surprisingly the supply was insufficient to meet the demand, especially in the urban area. The written exam was first come, first served, so I visited a nearby, relatively highly-rated BMV half an hour after it opened. The line was already so long, so I had to wait an hour to sign up for the exam. When I finally got a chance to speak to the receptionist, she said I may or may not be able to take the exam that day. Surprisingly, there was only one computer in the BMV, so it all depended on how fast people could finish their exams. My cousin and I both had a schedule that does not usually align with BMV hours, so I decided to wait, and spent 2 hours glaring at 4 people taking the exam. Unfortunately, they were out of time, and we had to go back home. On our second visit, we arrived a little earlier and luckily I was able to take the exam and get the permit. Unlike the written exam, the driving test was only by reservation, so I went to the BMV website, and this is where the project begins. I chose to devise a benevolent intervention because the existing technology was already malevolent enough.
After I entered my personal information, my BMV records were identified, and I was able to access the scheduling webpage. This is how the system was designed:
It all went smoothly until I had to click each agencies to check the availability. Either the slots for the dates that I selected were unavailable, or their earliest date available did not work for my schedule. Accordingly, not only did I have to check each agencies individually, but also I had to check each dates for each of them. For instance, if I wanted to take an exam in October 24, I had to click each agencies to check their availability in October 24. The inefficient interface was causing serious congestion, because some agencies were fully booked a month in advance, while nearby agencies had many unbooked slots; The users got tired of checking each station individually, assumed all the stations were fully booked, and decided to wait for a month while neighboring agencies in the corner of the map were available the next day. I felt frustrated because the interface was overcomplicated for such a simple task, so this is how I simplified the process:
Since most people have their own schedule, I thought it would be convenient to see on the map which agencies are available on a selected date. For those who want to take the exam at a specific agency, instead of having them check the availability for each dates only to find out that it’s fully booked, I thought it would be nice to indicate the available dates on a monthly calendar, so we don’t have to check each dates one by one. This way, the user can also find out the earliest date available intuitively.
