The city of Chicago showcases a vibrant food culture through its 7,300+ restaurants, 150+ summer food festivals, and 61 farmers markets for instance. While the public enjoys the food diversity, behind the scenes entrepreneurs face a complex licensing process to provide food legally. In 2018, IIT Institute of Design partnered with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC) to guide entrepreneurs through licensing.
How might we help food entrepreneurs understand licensing to start their business in Chicago?
Team: 9 designers • Role: User Research, Design of Health Inspection Map, License Decision Tree and Final Report
APPROACH
To understand licensing and the ecosystem, we interviewed 4 entrepreneurs, 4 city officials, and 2 business consultants. I conducted 2 of the user interviews. Additionally, we analyzed resources provided by Chicago and other American cities to see how they guided entrepreneurs.
Photo by James Sutton from Unsplash
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
To comply with the rules set by Chicago, food entrepreneurs face many hurdles:
1. Licensing involves many pathways, documents, and departments.
Selling hot-dogs from a truck or in a shop requires different licenses. Licensing is hard to keep up with because it relies on many business variables (service provided, location, etc.) and approvals from other city departments.
2. Public information is hard to consume and act upon.
Public information such as the municipal code prescribes what is doable and prohibited, not what is done right. Besides, factsheets are usually text-heavy and full of jargon. Finally, most entrepreneurs face a language barrier as they don't speak English fluently.
Chicago Municipal code extract
Factsheet from the BACP (Business Affairs and Consumer Protection)
3. Information may be outdated due to the change of legislation.
As rules constantly change, entrepreneurs have to ensure documentation is up-to-date to not unknowingly miss a requirement or be in violation.
UX CHALLENGES
Standardize content: content must be easy to navigate, easy to maintain
Make information actionable: make it concise yet comprehensive and approachable
STANDARDIZING THE MAPS
We created a modular design language using building blocks. For each component, we defined specifications and guidelines to ensure consistency across the entire set of maps.
Interactions with the city departments are color coded.
We differentiated sequential vs simultaneous process, definite vs ongoing paths.
We prompted when actions and documents were needed or optional while enabling tracking.
Mobile Food Preparer License Map extract
MAKING INFORMATION ACTIONABLE - BUILDING A DECISION TREE
To support decision-making for entrepreneurs, 2 teammates and I listed existing licenses based on the city website. We categorized the business variables using an affinity diagram to clarify the topology and dependencies. Finally, we used card sorting to reorder the questions until licenses could be identified quickly. Testing yielded to faster and more confident decision-making.
Affinity Diagram of Business Variables
Sequence iteration
Extract of License Decision Tree Final Version
TESTING - FACILITATING 2 WORKSHOPS
We drove conversations with entrepreneurs, city officials, and business consultants to:
Ensure the content accuracy and fill information gaps
Test the design of the maps
Identify areas of improvement
Maps Prototype during first workshop
Discussing the maps Final Version during second workshop with stakeholders
FINAL SOLUTION
10 Maps for each licence + 1 Decision Tree
We turned text-heavy documents into 10 visual maps to help entrepreneurs understand licensing. With the growing number of maps, we created a decision tree to quickly identify relevant licenses for each business.
Client report
To enable CFPAC to act upon the project, we provided a detail report with our work and tools for further conversations on the area of concerns.
IMPACT
The maps were successfully well-received from all stakeholders during our final workshop.
Final presentation during second workshop with entrepreneurs, city officials, and business consultants
“It’s the most informative structure I’ve seen. It’s easy to understand for everyone, I know who to turn to and how to move forward. It’s amazing because it’s not that easy.”
“It represents the questions we get all the time. A handout form would be great. It’s helpful to see the overview and what the end-result should be. It aligns everyone.”
RELATED ARTICLES
Chicago Food Policy Action Council
Licenses and permitsIIT Institute of Design
Starting a food business Chicago-style
EVENT PRESENTATION
14th Annual Chicago Food Policy Summit - February 2019
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