EPA ‘Report A Tosser’ Digital Experience

As the Premier's priority was to reduce litter by 40%, the EPA wanted more reports that resulted in convictions, and reduced cost-to-serve. As part of NSW government's shift toward customer-centricity, the interface required a redesign informed by user-research in parallel to new solution architecture. The pre-existing digital experience was outdated, full of friction and had a high exit-rate. It was difficult to use, prone to human error, and submitting a report has legal implications reporters must be aware of. To succeed, the interface needed to be simple, informative, accessible, and empathetically address the fears and values of a concerned citizen.

CEC designed a complete and accessible responsive UI, validated by litter reporters, and ready for build. We carried out an expert audit of the existing design to understand the system's complexities. We designed solutions, continuously validating with stakeholders and NSW Government's digital design standards to ensure technical feasibility and accessibility. Existing reporters were invited to test the interfaces revealing where the design needed to pivot, enabling the team to deliver build-ready design specifications. The success of the project lay in clear vision, clear guidelines, and consistent cooperation between designers and stakeholders to achieve an efficient design easily adopted by users.

As a result of our work, it is more likely that reports with the right information will be submitted, driving littering behaviour down across the state. Our design delivered an experience that was desirable and easy for users to report, with an average user satisfaction rating of 8.8/10, and encouraged users to report again. The interface patterns were designed to be scalable across all of EPA's reporting platforms so that in the future other litter reports such as illegal dumping and noise and air pollution can be re-released with an intuitive interface.

Aside from enabling a simpler and more intuitive process, the user experience sought to encourage reporters to make reporting a habit by giving feedback and rewarding regular reporters. Users were delighted with bright graphics and animation (a 'fist-bump') after submitting the report to acknowledge their courage and hard work. The experience ended with a summary of how close the EPA were to reaching their targets so reporters could visualise their impact. Designed for a future release, the system would also include digital 'badges' to reward regular reporters and measure their impact to the environment. Reporters could also keep track of the actions the EPA were taking in response to their submission, for example: if the report was currently under investigation, or if it had reached a resolution.