Center for Justice Innovation

E-Courses as Alternatives to Fines and Fees in NYC

Overview

In NYC, the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2017 shifted many low-level violations from criminal to civil court. With this influx of people into the civil courts, the Center for Justice Innovation, on behalf of NYC's Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), sought to create online courses, as an alternative to in-person classes, as one of the community service-based ways for folks to resolve their summons.

Offered in multiple languages, both the one and two hour-long interactive learning modules that we designed engage respondents around common quality of life offenses, the consequences they have on communities, and ways to prevent making similar decisions in the future. As a result, these courses offer a much more flexible, accessible solution to resolving civil summonses, both for the city of New York and for court users.

Key Services

UX/UI

Instructional Design

Content Design

Illustration

Additional Info

Process

Through our human-centered design process, our product team began this project by attending a day in court, participating in the existing Quality of Life in-person course, interviewing real participants before and after actual sessions, and hosting several workshops with SMEs. We also familiarized ourselves with the four tenets of procedural justice that would underscore our work throughout this project: Treating court users with dignity and respect; Ensuring that they understand the process they are involved in; Providing them a voice; and Communicating that court decisions are made neutrally.

We then combined our research with pedagogy and best practices for instructional design, to outline and storyboard the learning experience. Following Moreno and Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, we paired the collectively defined learning objectives with a variety of interactive features—like games, conversations, motion graphics, videos, narrative arcs, and quizzes—to form the structure of the courses. The multiple scenario-based learning games at the center of the experience feature dozens of illustrated characters and objects, as well as settings and environments that reflect the city that court users are familiar with.

As a final step, we also designed and built a portal for the courses on OATH's website, allowing court users to securely enter their summons information and access the course from anywhere. The portal tracks progress through the course and once finished, automatically issues successful completion notifications to both the court user and on their summons record in OATH's LMS.

Result
Both the 1 and 2-hour course are translated into an additional 7 languages to serve the broad variety of New York's population. Offerings like these are a crucial component of the larger effort to decriminalize many low-level quality of life offenses, and are a meaningful step towards democratizing access to critical government services in New York City.

To learn more about this project, check out the Center for Justice Innovation's article on their blog Re-thinking Tech.

Our product team began this project by attending a day in court, participating in the existing Quality of Life in-person course, interviewing real participants before and after actual sessions, and hosting several workshops with SMEs.

This enabled us to pair research, creativity, and best practices for instructional design, as we outlined and storyboarded the learning experience.

Importantly, the four tenets of procedural justice also underscored our work throughout this project:

Treating court users with dignity and respect
Ensuring they understand the process they're involved in
Providing them a voice
Communicating that court decisions are made neutrally.

The learning objectives we collectively defined in our research phase are communicated through a variety of interactive features—like games, conversations, motion graphics, videos, narrative arcs, and quizzes—to form the structure of the courses.

The scenario-based learning games at the center of the experience feature dozens of illustrated characters and objects, as well as settings and environments that reflect the city that court users are familiar with.

As a final step, we also designed and built a portal for the courses on OATH's site, allowing court users to access the course from anywhere.

The portal tracks progress and automatically issues successful completion notifications to both the court user and on their summons record in OATH's LMS.

You can read more about CJI's Civil Alternatives program here, or read more about this project on their blog, Re-Thinking Tech. You can also watch a video demo of the first hour course below.