Business logics have a way to influencing how the UX of an application will take form. In 2022, I was involved in design a new mobile application for Bristow & Sutor for their enforcement agents. What are enforcement agents you ask? They are on-ground personnels in-charge of debt collection by means of cash, credit or goods.
For an Indian, this might sound like a new concept but imagine Vasooli bhai from the movie Golmaal minus the loan shark persona and threats of physical injury 😄. Let me back up.
Bristow & Sutor is a UK-based enforcement agency that specialises in debt recovery and enforcement services. They work with a range of clients, including local authorities, magistrates' courts, and private sector organisation, to recover outstanding debts such as council tax arrears, parking fines, and commercial rent arrears. And their enforcement agents (or EAs in short) are their partners that are commissioned by B&S and the court to physically collect debt from the penalised.
But EAs are not the first mode of debt recovery for B&S. The above diagram shows how a typical case starts with an incident where the debtor violates the law (e.g. parking in a no-parking zone) to how an EA is assigned for the said case. It is also to be noted that the debt amount needs to cross a certain threshold for a case to be reinforcement worthy (usually over £100).
Needless to say there are various laws that both EAs and B&S have to adhere to while proceed with debt recovery like the chronology of procedures to follow before and after making contact with the debtor, concessions to vulnerable citizens and strategies to apply in the case of a non-compliant debtor.
Typical debt-recovery scenario between private debt collectors and debtor. © Financial-Times
Goods removal by the bailiff in the event of non-payment of debt.
© Getty-Images
But what makes this project interesting is that anybody with any with a valid certificate for the UK government can become an EA and partner with B&S. This means that apart from few special cases, debt recovery cases appear in a job rooster from where registered members can assign themselves cases. These cases have debt amount, debtor profile & address, case details, etc. associated with them, the goal of an EA is to find and pick the most lucrative cases with seemingly compliant debtor profiles.
This must sound familiar, it at least did to me and also the reason why EAs are called partners at B&S. The self-assignment model mimics in some degree the interactions for an Uber driver, or Dunzo delivery person with the only exception that debt collection cases are not instantaneous and EAs can assign multiples cases to themselves at once at the beginning of the week. This is where our application comes into picture. It is also to be noted that the EA app is used to not just for discovery and self-assignment but also during the recovery process to guide the EA through the enforcement procedure.
As a designer, apart from delivering the obvious designs that fulfil the functional needs of the business and EA, our research focused on increasing effective communication and transparency between B&S and EAs, solidifying adherence to the legal procedure during the time of recovery to avoid complications and misbehaviour, increasing the safety of EAs on the ground and establishing accurate reporting capabilities throughout the process timeline.
Unfortunately, this project is under NDA and prevents me from writing or talking further about this project.
Nevertheless, send me hi to know more.