City of Brooklyn Center

The Problem

In 2020, approximately 80% of 911 calls in Brooklyn Center were related to non-criminal matters, yet police response is similar no matter the reason for the call. The results of this were deadly in the cases of Kobe Dimock-Heisler and Daunte Wright who both died at the hands of police.

In response to these events, the city passed the Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution which aims to reduce the role of armed police in low-level offenses. It creates two new departments for Traffic Enforcement and Community Response, as well as a new Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention to oversee all city agencies and city efforts regarding community health and public safety

This type of legislation that attempts systemic change is unique at a local level, despite broad support in the United States. In addition to the three new departments, the resolution created an implementation committee to put these changes in place. The implementation committee including Mayor Mike Elliott were our stakeholders for this project, and their goal was to create a new website to inform community members of important updates and act as an engagement channel

The Process

Research

• Research was arguably the most important aspect of this project; learning about the space we were working in and talking with residents of Brooklyn Center was critical in guiding the rest of our decisions going forward

• First we completed secondary research by learning about other cities and states who had passed similar legislation, how they communicated this information to the public, and features that our users would expect. We completed a competitive analysis (pictured below) to review resources in the police violence, public safety, and government sectors. This task was shared by all members of the team.

• Next the research team - which consisted of myself and teammate Justin Daleiden - completed primary research; we spoke with community members in Brooklyn Center to learn about their stories, experiences, and thoughts about the changes happening in their community. We asked what they had heard about the new resolution, where they got their information from, and what type of information they would like to see in a website meant to inform the public. 3 major themes of what types of things users wanted from a website emerged from this research:

  • Communication: users desired clear communication channels from the city in regards to ongoing updates as the resolution is implemented in their city

  • Transparency: community members wanted to know clearly where the implementation committee is in their process and how their decisions are being made

  • Data/evidence: Brooklyn Center residents had been central to many national news stories and felt there was a spotlight on their city and pressure to make changes. They wanted to know these changes were rooted in data and wanted clearly displayed evidence to back up what was happening in their government

Synthesis

• A large part of the design process was synthesizing the wealth of information we collected during the research phase. I was responsible for completing the final research report which you can view here:

• Community members had many desires when it came to information displayed on a new website. We completed several rounds of research to narrow these categories down using a card sort, low-fidelity prototyping, and usability tests to further refine how the information would be organized

• The landing page of the website is designed to be a scannable summary of the most relevant information that community members will be visiting the site to learn about. More in-depth information can be found in the navigation header

• We landed on four final navigation headers that will house all the relevant information:

  • About

  • Who is Involved

  • Learn

  • Get Involved

• The final result is a website that contains a large amount of complex information but is organized in an accessible, frictionless, and scannable manner

Design

• We started our higher fidelity designs by creating a design system that was used to create consistent pages and designs that could be uniformly edited.

• This site required a large amount of copywriting in order to clearly convey more complex materials such as the 4-page city resolution summarized in one paragraph. We also utilized data visualization to create visuals of key data to convey information in more than one way

• We had several rounds of editing and critiques in order to strike the right voice and tone on a website that will be so central in informing the public coming from all walks of life and political affiliations

The Results

• A high-fidelity clickable prototype was made in Figma and can be viewed here:

The Challenges

• Content strategy was one of the largest parts of this design. Between the stakeholders requests and community member desires, there was a huge amount of information to sort, categorize, and present in a manageable way

• Striking the correct tone and voice on this website was a balance that took effort to achieve. There are strong opinions from many different viewpoints on the issues of public safety and policing so we strove to keep the information presented based in facts and data

Next Steps & Takeaways

Next Steps

• Next, we will hand off the design files to our client. The next steps for these designs include:

  • Choosing a hosting platform and building the site

  • Translating the content into other languages so the site is accessible to everyone in the community

  • Updating content as changes happen with the resolution and changes are implemented in the city

Takeaways

• It was an honor to partner with the city of Brooklyn Center while they are implementing such important work. In a time when real systemic change in our country is so hard to come by, it was an privilege to work with a city that is doing the work to reimagine what public safety can look like for everyone

• This was an end-to-end design process where our team completed all the steps from research through execution of a high-fidelity prototype. In my role as project manager I set forth timelines for the project, assigned tasks as needed, and ensured that all deadlines were met.

• The community members of Brooklyn Center remained the central focus for our design, and every decision we made was done with their needs in mind. Topics such as public safety can invoke many thoughts and opinions and our team strove to keep the language on the site evidence-based and accessible to all