Arrest?SG

Inspiration

Too many large problems have already been addressed. Instead of Vitamin C or Panadol, why don't we make something like Atorvastatin instead? By narrowing down our target audience to Singaporeans who are arrested or detained overseas, we hope to make our users feel relieved that our product exists should they ever find themselves in such an emergency.

What it does

Overseas Singaporeans may run into trouble with the legal system for any reason unexpectedly. Our product helps them navigate the overseas legal landscape more efficiently by pinpointing and addressing the painpoints in the current process. With reference to the MFA website, we've identified a few key painpoints: 1) lack of a clear set of actionable steps that the arrested/detained individual can refer to; the arrested individuals do not know what to do next, what can they expect, and which stage along the whole process they're at now 2) useful resources are scattered everywhere throughout the web; lack of consolidation of resources; the MFA website may provide some advice and links to other sources, but individuals will have to do most of the information consolidation on their own. The website they're redirected to may still point to other information sources. 3) Lack of digitalized services available. The services the consular officers can provide are not digitalized, and the arrested individuals and their family members will have to contact the consular officer for everything they need via phone calls etc. As a result, the arrested individuals will feel very uncertain in this situation. Having to do so much work by themselves means that they'll be experiencing much cognitive burden when they're already so stressed, and this is not ideal.

How might we: 1) Give arrested/detained Singaporeans overseas a sense of certainty and structure in such a stressful, uncertain time? 2) Make the whole process (including resource consolidation) simple and seamless so as to not further increase their cognitive burden?

Our Solution

• When the arrested individuals are searching for advice on what to do next, a quick Google search will bring them to the MFA website. To them, they'll be relieved as the MFA should be the primary information source for their situation. If they can't even find the answer on the website of the official government body in charge of such cases, then nowhere else will likely have the information they're looking for.
• In the "Overseas Arrest/Detention" section of the MFA website, the individuals will be redirected to a sub-application in their Singpass app. Rather than giving the user many scattered advice about what to do and other information source to look to, the MFA website simply informs the individual to access this sub application for everything they'll need
• After filling in their basic information (their personal details, country and state of arrest, case description, family members' contact details), they're automatically assigned a consular officer for their specific case. They will also be issued a dedicated case number.
• In the homepage of the sub-application, they realised that it's a case portal, with a few main functions like "case progress", "contact consular officer", "lawyer selection", "prison visit appointment" etc. Our solution focuses on illustrating the use case for "case progress", but there can be more functions to incorporate into the case portal based on the type of services provided by the consular officer and other relevant parties.
• In the "case progress" function, the users will notice that a timeline specific to their type of case is assigned to them. This timeline is separated into "stages", and within each stage the user can see what the consular officer needs to do, and they themselves need to do. There will be a check box assigned to each task, and only the specified party (eg. consular officer, arrested individual) can mark their respective tasks as completed. They can navigate throughout the timeline and know what to expect next, and exactly where they are in the whole process. If the user needs to complete a specific task that has been incorporated into the case portal as one of the functions, the user will be redirected to the function from their timeline when the time comes. (eg. redirected to "lawyer selection" when required to select a lawyer to represent them for their case)
• The users and other concerned parties like their family members will be able to access the same case portal so that everyone's kept in the loop. Different parties may be granted different permission status (eg. family members can only view, and can't mark any tasks as completed)
• Since the users and their family members all know what to expect thanks to the timeline, they can now contact the consular officers with informed questions, rather than asking aimlessly about what to expect next and what to do next. They can contact the consular officer directly via one of the functions on the homepage, and these chat portals may be furnished with auto-replies that can serve as a guideline.

In summary

• The timeline feature gives certainty and structure to the users and their family members. They now know what to expect next, what they need to do now, and which stage along the whole process they're at currently.
• By consolidating all the resources they'll need in form of digitalised functions and connecting them with the consular officer all in one place, our solution serves as a one-stop portal for all relevant parties involved. This reduces the cognitive burden on the individuals, in a sense that all they need to do now is just to follow the flow and do what the app tells them to do. Our app addresses the painpoints previously identified.

How we built it

After brainstorming to identify the painpoints and coming up with our solution design, we used hand-sketching followed by Miro to get the Wireframe out.

Challenges we ran into

We do not know how to code, so all we can do for now is to use wireframe to illustrate our idea in order to show that it does address the painpoints.

Timeline feature The timeline feature should be simple enough coding-wise, but the process of crafting one out is actually quite difficult. It is necessary to: 1) Categorise the types of arrest so that each type can have its respective timeline. 2) Make sure that there is a "typical" flow for each type of arrest. (the timeline feature may be more relevant to "small" crimes, since "large" ones may not have a typical flow at all) 3) Further identify the "stages" involved for the typical cases of each type of arrest.

As we lack qualitative data to refer to, we can't identify the typical stages involved in an overseas arrest. As such, our wireframe serves only to showcase our idea of how to address the painpoints at this stage, and more research is needed to prove its feasibility.

Furthermore, if we have to include in the outcomes, the timeline feature may not be a straight line but rather a tree-like structure branching out into different possibilities. We hope to keep the timeline as a simple straight line to follow to showcase how the process of a typical overseas arrest case is supposed to look like.

Portal feature The feature of engaging different parties (eg. arrested individuals, family members, consular officers) all in a single portal may be more difficult to actualise coding-wise, but we believe it is feasible.

The case portal will be tagged to the case ID generated for a specific case, and relevant parties can be allowed in on a permission basis by possibly the overseeing consular officer.

The consular officer will also be the one to choose a specific timeline based on the type of case as identified from the case description provided by the individual. If any further details are required, the consular officer can contact the individual directly via the chat function in the portal.

Remarks It is possible to apply the timeline + portal design to other overseas emergency situations as well (Eg. Loss of passport). In this case, the Arrest/Detention portal can be grouped together with other overseas emergency services under the umbrella of a sub-application called "Overseas Emergencies" in the Singpass app. However, we must make sure that there exist a "typical" case for the timeline feature to come in handy.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The idea itself feels pretty legit in addressing the painpoints.

What we learned

Wireframing. Design Thinking.

What's next for Warmup2.0

Learning how to code!

Built With

• miro