Bail check feature for officers in the field.
Bail is an essential aspect of our country’s justice system, and the Police play a very important part in monitoring people awaiting their court appearance. ‘Bailees’ are required to stay at home under a curfew (until their court date) as part of their bail conditions, and frontline officers are tasked to check if those conditions are being complied with.
One of the major products we launched with the NZ Police was a mobile app that enhanced an officer’s situational awareness by visualising relevant data on a map - think Google Maps for Police. As a product in ongoing development, the value of adding Bail to this map became quickly apparent to Police, and my team was tasked with designing and developing this feature.
The goal of the new Bail feature was to equip officers with enough relevant information to assist them in performing bail checks effectively and safely.
Challenge
Bail checking has been a common task for frontline officers for a long time. How could our team design and implement an updated Bail checking system that improved on the original system’s limitations?
After talking to the business stakeholders and interviewing officers, we learned that the Bail check system was essentially administered in a paper-based format. This meant the checks couldn’t be completed if you didn’t have the printed list, doubling-up on checks was common, and officers were unable to tell where addresses actually were, relative to their current location.
We also learned that certain officers only checked particular bail types, depending on their specialisation. This insight in particular was very helpful, as it highlighted user behaviour we hadn’t even considered.
Workshops with officers at the Christchurch Police Station were a valuable user research method for SAM.
Solution
With a greater understanding of how the original Bail process worked (and some in-station concept usability testing), I was then able to design solutions to the problems we identified.
The most obvious solution was the ability to display addresses on the map, allowing officers to decide which bails to check based on their location. Other solutions focused on communicating the status of Bail checks to all officers to avoid over-checking, and filtering what bails could be displayed to ensure officers could view information relevant to them.
Officers can find Bail checks on the Map screen. If a one is selected, a Bail Details screen is displayed which provides info such as the person and their address.
Conclusion
I ran usability testing sessions with these improvements before development began, and the positive feedback from officers gave us a high degree of confidence in our design direction. Within weeks of the Bail feature’s release, we observed an immediate and significant increase in bail checks completed by officers during their shifts.
This project is one of my greatest UX achievements to date. I was heavily involved in the improvement of a vital process within our government, the improvements were measurable, and the result is a tangible, positive impact on society. This project also allowed me to further advocate the value of user research to my team and Police, leading to the introduction of processes such as workshops and remote testing.