This page shows our design process in approaching the Plea Agreement challenge. We are taking an open-source approach — being transparent in our work and hoping to share our findings for others to use.
We have documented our initial 4-session workshop, in which we began to scope out the challenge into more specific design briefs and to generate some concept designs for improving the process.
Session 1: Understanding the Status Quo
Our initial gathering introduced all of our participants to the concept of plea bargaining, and gave them a chance to explore what the status quo situations are in both federal and state courts. Professor Bob Weisberg from the law school gave an introductory lecture and fielded questions from the students. And we had several prosecutors and defense attorneys attend in the second half, to be interviewed by the participants about the status quo, challenges deserving of redesign, and potential opportunities and openings.
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Session 2: Synthesizing Our User Research Into a Design Brief
[juicebox gallery_id=”3″]Session 3: Brainstorming Possible Solutions
In our third session, the teams took their brainstormed ideas & began to develop them into mock-ups, flows, and thought-out prototypes. These prototypes were not meant to be high fidelity — but rather enough of a manifestation of the idea that the team could present them to the stakeholders and get rich feedback about whether the idea was worth pursuing — or what other path might be more promising.
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