Premise

Through a partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago and the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, The UIC School of Design’s DES 420 course was a year-long studio that was used to redesign and revitalize the experience of both customers and employees at Illinois DMV locations. Much of the project was graphic and experience design oriented, aiming to redesign DMV logos, graphics, artwork, flyers, iconography, etc. A small team of 4 industrial design students was formed, however, to redesign and improve Illinois’s mobile DMV units, which are mainly used to bring certain DMV services (license renewal, sticker renewal, state IDs) to different locations, such as conventions, shows, universities, etc.

current setup

The current version of the Illinois Mobile DMV units is fairly disorganized. As shown in the image to the left, DMV employees wheel the necessary equipment in on dollies. The equipment is stored in multiple sized boxes, all of which are left either stuck in a random corner of the room being used, or just to the side of the tables in use. The Secretary of State’s desire was to improve the DMV’s image while also maintaining a professional image, and therefore, my teammates and I quickly identified that this loose stack of boxes impeded the professionalism that was desired.

This sentiment that the current setup appears messy and unprofessional was only supported by rapidly identifying the lack of cable management. Because the mobile DMV units make use of whatever tables are provided by the location they are visiting, cable management is nearly impossible and impractical to maintain. This was a point we felt needed to be addressed by our solution.

We also found that while not detrimental to the mobile units, the layout of seating for the customers and the placement of the table cloth made it so that it was harder to identify for passerbys as the DMV when customers were seated in front of the Secretary of State’s logo.