Wait Times @ RMV
Am sure just a thought of going to RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) leaves a tingling sensation in everybody’s spine. I know it does to me. A trip to RMV means, clearing up your schedule for atleast 2 hours but may vary based on the purpose of your trip. More interestingly, when you take a step back and think from a more societal level, an incredible amount of man hours are wasted considering the number of people go to RMV everyday.
Based on my loosely knit estimate, I think more than 500 people visit RMV per day. Am being conservative in the number since there are times like holiday periods, snow storms that might skew some numbers. And that number is just for one RMV location. This number is so high despite the fact that rmv websites now allow you to complete many services online or over the phone.
A user experience geek that I’m, sometimes I enjoy waiting in lines, contemplating the funny fact that how easily we accept things, processes the way they are and happily live with them. Well, ‘happily’ necessarily means cursing the system and talking about it for couple of days and letting them go. Its not like I’m any different FYI. Although I might think of switching careers from a very computer based UX job that I have right now to a job that transcends into the physical world and not just limited to computer screens, or any screen I should say. One day!
Anywho, I went to get a copy of registration for my car during lunch time on a typical Wednesday. As I made my way into the RMV, seeing the line just to get the reception desk made me wonder uh.. should I turn back or suck it up and stand in a line which had almost 20 people infront of me. And in honesty, each person was taking like 10 min at the reception desk. So things, as you can see, were not pretty.
Just to give you an idea what I’m talking about. Below is view from the top how things looked like.
Red dot is where I was.
Standing in line, my obvious first reaction was to whip out my phone and do something. Its incredible (and takes a lot courage) when we get away from the phone while waiting in line and be more social in the real world. You see things! While standing in line, I started listening to music and put my phone in pocket to resist my urge to go back to social networks and make my presence felt in the virtual society.
So how it works at the RMV :
People are supposed come to the reception
State their problem
Get the appropriate form (also sometimes checking sufficient documentation)
Fill the appropriate form
Give the form back to the receptionist
Get the waiting ticket number
Problem:
Anyways, the apparent problem lied in the above bold bullet point. Atleast that’s what I thought when I first looked at how things were working. But good thing about being a UX person is that you make sure you spend enough time identifying the problem first, before diving in completely. I think that is the key to improving any process or even leading to an innovation for that matter.
Was the fifth blue bullet the main problem? Lets see.
People usually walk in knowing the problem, but not necessarily knowing which form they actually need to resolve that problem. They wait in line, get to the receptionist, tell him/her the problem, get the form and possibly show the necessary documents. Not denying the fact that its a good way to filter out people with incomplete documents . But the whole point is, why people know about the required documents once they reach the receptionist. Agreed that the information is all there online, but I think we should zoom out a level and consider the non-tech population who want to handle things in person rather than on a screen.
So problems in the process so far:
People do not know appropriate forms
Proper list of documents required for the service
Moving on, so when people chit chat with the receptionist and get the forms finally, they walk to the form filling area and fill out the form. Once they fill out the form, they go round the main line to receptionist (red dotted line in the figure), and again talk to the receptionist and get then get waiting list number.
So the new problem in this process is:
3. Second line for the filled forms using the same resource (receptionist)
So, the major problem: Getting the right form and having the right documents.
Solution
An easier way to let the people know the forms they need. This could possibly be done by:
Having charts or information clearly laid out indicating certain forms for specific services
Same form is used for many different purposes So if the services are listed along with the correct form available under this info, it would make a boatload of difference.
A more expensive way could be to have kiosks for printing out the necessary forms
Whether its a traditional poster type info or high tech kiosk printing station, point being that before getting to the receptionist, people should have most of the form filled out and be aware of the documents required for that particular service. This will not only shorten the line since people will be filling the form first and then getting into the line, but also the number of people going back to the receptionist after filling the form will hopefully be non existent.
