CCAO New Homeowner Gift Box
Building trust and instilling confidence in county government
Partner:
Cook County Assessor's Office
Faculty Lead:
Mark Jones
Class:
Service Systems Workshop
Project Team:
Vaaibhav Bhardwaj
Yoichi Kanayama
J. Smyk
Zixuan Zhao
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“This project gave us an opportunity to see first-hand how valuable a design perspective can be in developing human-centered local government services. Partnering with CCAO, we saw the impact that the current service offering has both on property owners and employees of Cook County Assessor’s Office. By using a combination of human-centered and service design skills, we were able to propose a concept that CCAO will begin to consider implementing for new homeowners in Cook County.”
This is a conceptual prototype developed for the Cook County Assessor's Office to consider how they might initiate positive dialogue with new homeowners to build trust and instill confidence in the Office. The prototype also aims to build pride in property owners for supporting community services.
For many years, public trust in the Office has been eroded due to inequitable property assessment policies adopted by previous administrations. As Fritz Kaegi's current administration works to implement fairer, more equitable, and transparent improvements in the property assessment process, we proposed this Gift Box as a way to establish goodwill with new residential property owners.
We designed the Gift Box to accomplish three goals: first, to surprise the homeowner with something unexpected, meaningful, and unique from the county government; second, to provide information about how the property owner supports critical local services, and how he or she will interact with CCAO in the coming months and years; third, we wanted to connect homeowners with their community, building a sense of pride and instilling sense a duty to play their critical role in supporting the services that make for a stronger, more valuable collective community.
The offering is composed of a handful of elements. The “box” itself is a custom-designed pop-up mailer which opens like a book to reveal the other contained elements. On the inside, there is a note of congratulations to the homeowner, a helpful information card, and a set of drink coasters highlighting four of the many community services that property taxes support.
Each element is designed to tie back to the Cook County community, whether through the use of a classic map of the county and its townships, through CCAO branding and process information, or through the unique coaster designs demonstrating the valuable assets and services homeowners help support through the taxes they pay.
To see details of our work, click here.
