Design for Equity: Ticket and Debt Collection Reform in Chicago
A case study of design at work in the civic sector
Making my way through City Hall on a fall day, I noticed an elderly lady sitting alone in a row of chairs inside the City Clerk’s office. She looked discouraged and worn out — probably tired of waiting. As I walked closer, she gave me a welcoming eye. So I sat down, introduced myself as a student researcher, and asked if she would be willing to share what brought her to the City Clerk’s office.
She pulled from her purse a gallon-size Ziploc bag packed with parking tickets, and began telling me how she had been trapped in ticket debt. Although not blameless, this woman was in a position where she had to choose whether to pay her medical bills or parking tickets.
She sat in the office and waited, determined to learn how many tickets she had to pay to keep the boot off her car.
She showed me a stapled set of papers — page after page of digits accompanied by outstanding payments owed to the city. Confused and tired of feeling targeted, she had no way of knowing what each ticket was for, where it happened, and when she needed to pay it. She was worried she might lose her ability to attend church and run necessary errands.
For her, her car was her livelihood.
Over 10,000 Chicago residents declared bankruptcy due to insurmountable ticket debt in 2018. The city’s ticketing and debt collection practices disproportionately affect people in majority Black and low-income neighborhoods. Many people in these neighborhoods rely on their cars to go to work and meet basic needs, but a car brings along a new set of financial burdens.
Once receiving a parking ticket it takes just a few weeks for it to double, triple, and create an inescapable debt spiral. Residents are caught choosing between a city payment plan they often can’t afford or a bankruptcy plan. Otherwise, their car will be impounded and license revoked, setting up a cycle of more debt and potentially more bankruptcies.
The city’s ticketing and debt collection practices disproportionately affect people in majority Black and low-income neighborhoods.
Disproportionate ticketing and debt collection in poor neighborhoods, particularly minority neighborhoods, points to a larger systemic problem fueled by income disparity, inequitable legislation, and neighborhood disinvestment. More tactically, the mechanisms involved in the city’s digital systems through which residents are expected to pay their outstanding fines are complex, requiring access to the internet as well as an online bank account (which is inaccessible for one million unbanked Chicago households). To compound the barriers, unclear communication and lack of formal support from the city once receiving a ticket leads to improper management, and consequently more debt. These layers of systemic complexity serve to hide the disparate aspects of minority resident’s everyday life, keeping inequities status quo.
Issues that appear small and tactical, such as a parking ticket and lack of instructions, can quickly snowball into a systems-level problem pushing Chicago’s massive debt onto the shoulders of the poorest residents. For evidence, see ProPublica’s interactive database of over 54 million parking tickets that identifies where parking tickets are issued and visualizes disparities within the system. The good news is, this system was conceived of and made by humans, and therefore can be changed to reflect the true needs and values of those affected by it.
Disproportionate ticketing and debt collection in poor neighborhoods, particularly minority neighborhoods, points to a larger systemic problem. The good news is, this system was conceived of and made by humans, and therefore can be changed by humans.
At the Institute of Design, we practice design as a way to address structural inequities and develop design interventions within complex systems. Chicago’s disproportionate ticketing and debt collection is a deeply entangled problem, and we don’t have the luxury to redesign the Chicago government and its policies. What we can do is identify the key nodes and actors reinforcing inequitable design, creating a window into the right place to intervene and make positive change.
At the Institute of Design, we practice design as a way to address structural inequities. We ask, “how might the city instead act as a partner and guide, equipping residents to make better informed payment decisions to help keep them from the debt spiral?”
Working in collaboration with the Office of the City Clerk (Anna Valencia), my colleagues and I in Mark Jones’s Service Design Workshop conducted dozens of interviews with residents, collecting hundreds of data points that illuminated the issues within the city’s parking ticket system, including:
- Navigating the ticketing system creates a heavy cognitive load on the resident and is one of the greatest barriers to paying,
- Residents feel like the city is rooting for their failure instead of helping them succeed, and
- Residents have difficulty managing and prioritizing monthly bills vs. unexpected tickets while also considering long-term implications.
We asked, “how might the city instead act as a partner and guide, equipping residents to make better informed payment decisions to help keep them from the debt spiral?”
To address the above issues and improve residents’ relationship with the city, my colleagues Shiya Xiao, Yueyue Yang, and I developed a tailored parking ticket ‘roadmap’ that will live within the resident’s existing City of Chicago portal.
This ticketing roadmap reframes the City Clerk’s Office and the City of Chicago Government as positive, partnering actors, instead of forces working against residents.
Through visualized, easily digestible information of the resident’s unique ticket situation and timeline, the tool is designed to provide a sense of control, empowering ticket holders with the information they need to take the right steps forward. This new way of receiving information and making pragmatic decisions introduces positive feedback loops into the system, lifting those downtrodden by tickets and uncertainty into a place of agency and control.
When we presented to the city in December 2019, we received overwhelming positive feedback. Since then, the city has rolled out a ticket debt relief program as well as reinstated licenses to those unable to pay off their debt through the License to Work Act.
Design research gives us the tools to understand the personal, on-the-ground truth of how people are affected within systems, so that we can create interventions that build responsibly toward a preferred future. I share this case study to demonstrate how design can approach tangled problems, understand the human pains and experiences within them, identify the key levers and stakeholders, and create an intervention that begins to disarm foul players and give all an equal footing.
The city has rolled out a ticket debt relief program as well as reinstated licenses to those unable to pay off their debt through the License to Work Act.
Although designers are not omnipotent problem solvers, we are incredible information gatherers, interpreters, mediators, and interventionists. We have the ability to design end-to-end experiences that connect all parties to their values and goals — whether personal, organizational, or communal.
How might we continue to unpack the inequitable systems we live in and strategically cut in to make change for the betterment of humanity?
