Research & Discovery
Studying how permits actually move through a city
IMPACT
7-Day Average Delay Identified in Technical Review Handoff
30% Rework Loop Caused by Incomplete Site Plans
80% of Applications Required Manual Data Transcription
68% Mobile Form Drop-Off on Core Flows
3× Redundant Address Entry Across Departments
Company: CivicLine
Focus: Research & Discovery
Context: Municipal permit and inspection workflows
Evidence: Field observations, artifact audits, service blueprinting, thematic synthesis
Before designing CivicLine, I studied how permits actually move through a city — across departments, time, and policy constraints. The goal was to understand where work breaks down before proposing solutions.
Permit work was spread across paper forms, emails, and legacy systems. Manual transcription created hidden labor and error risk.
Mapping the full lifecycle revealed delays during handoffs, not during individual tasks. Time gaps mattered more than task complexity.
Across teams, the same issues repeated: unclear ownership, late discovery of problems, and limited visibility into permit status.
Many constraints were fixed by law or state systems. The product needed to work within these limits, not around them.
Research pointed to clear intervention areas: earlier validation, shared state visibility, and fewer manual checkpoints.
Each research signal directly informed product decisions — from unified intake to identity verification integration.
