Case Study
City of Detroit Business Licensing & Permitting
Detroit, MI
The Challenge
The City of Detroit’s business permitting and licensing process was complex and difficult to navigate. Most entrepreneurs spent between 6-12 months getting their permits and licenses and were required to complete over 70 forms to submit a completed application. This proved to be a serious barrier for small business owners who could not afford these long wait times and unnecessary hurdles.
Our Approach:
Think + Make + Do
Gathering Insights
Before sharing a single idea or solution, our design team spent four weeks observing developers, contractors, and business owners as they navigated the existing permit application process. Based on our observations, we interviewed these same applicants to better understand their pain points and get a clear picture of what an ideal process would look like for them. Taking the time to deeply understand the problem from the user’s perspective allowed us to develop a solution that really worked.
Prototyping
Cities Reimagined facilitated a series of prototyping workshops where city employees and permit applicants sat down together to co-create a new system. City employees brought decades of knowledge into the room and an understanding of what could be realistically implemented. Permit applicants (entrepreneurs, developers) brought their lived experience to the table and a spirit of optimism for a new process. Working together, we created the country’s first human centered business licensing and permitting experience. The team was able to eliminate many pain points by turning the insights we gathered from users into design solutions.
Testing + Iterating
After just six months, the new system had already saved 2,700 hours of staff time because permit applicants were able to easily navigate the process on their own. We cut the number of required forms in half and reduced the wait time from four months to less than 30 days. City of Detroit staff tested the new process and iterated several times throughout the following year to keep up with user needs. Both staff and permit applicants report having a more intuitive and efficient experience.
