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Investigation (UX research)
From september to early december 2022
This project was born from a "call for ideation" initiated by the French Minitry of the Interior. Each year, this Ministry organises "TechMIUp", a time when all the people working for the Ministry can submit ideas of innovations which, according to them, would benefit the Minitry. A policeman submitted the idea of Basegun, an app which would help the law enforcement forces to identify firearms based on pictures. The Direction du Numérique of the Ministry took the responsibility to develop an MVP of this idea, in collaboration with the Central Service of Weapons and Explosives (SCAE), the service responsible for firearm regulation in France, who help with their firearms expertise.
1 web developer and 1 data scientist were hired in the DNUM with the system "Entrepreneurs d'Intérêt Général" (EIG), a 10-month program of French government for hiring people with high technological skills, usually from the private sector. The 2 EIG did not start coding the product immediately. They spent 3 months making video calls and visiting people who needed this project or could bring help understanding its stakes :
- policemen from various cities
- gendarmes from various regions
- firearms analysis labs of law enforcement forces
- high-level officials in law enforcement forces
- firearms experts from the Ministry of Interior
- customs officers
- fingerprint collection expert from police
- people who might have large collections of photos of firearms which we could use for training an AI algorithm.
First of all, they tried to identify who were the main targets of Basegun product. Then, they tried to aggregate all the info collected in the interviews to see what were the problems to priorize solving using Basegun.
Basegun addresses to the following users:
- non-investigating law enforcement forces [PRIMARY]
- investigating law enforcement forces (OPJ) [PRIMARY]
- firearm experts [SECONDARY]
- gunsmiths [SECONDARY]
- main public who possesses firearms [SECONDARY]
The first versions of Basegun will therefore only address law enforcement forces. The other users will be dealt with in the future.
Also called "primo-intervenants". They can be found in all types of law enforcement forces in France:
- in gendarmerie, they are called "unité territoriale"
- in police, they are called "voie publique"
- they also exist in customs
They are the people who carry out the generic law enforcement forces : do patrols, answer the phole when someone calls 17. Therefore they usually encounter firearms at random. They are often in stressful situations when they need to act quickly. When they are on mission, they are always in discussion with an OPJ on the radio. They need informations on the firearms they find so that they can inform the OPJ who can tell them what conduct to follow.
We had very few interview of people from this group because we could not find enough volunteers. Thus, our understanding of this group might be biased.
Also called "officiers de police judiciaire" (OPJ). Anyone from all types of law enforcement forces in France can pass a exam to become an OPJ and therefore be able to investigate.
They are the people who make investigations on cases. Usually they would know beforehand that there will be firearms during their mission, except when the initial goal was not about firearms (ex: finding guns at a drug dealer's place). Therefore they are usually well-prepared and are sometimes accompanied by firearm experts if the number of firearms is enough to justify them coming.
First of all, it is important to define what is a firearm expert.
According to SCAE (French firearm regulation officers), gunsmiths could benefit from Basegun in the particular cases when they sell guns they have little experience of.
In France, there are 4 legal categories of firearms.
- A : for military, no civilian can possess
- B : need pass permit B "tireur sportif" and renew it
- C : need pass permit C "chasse" only once
- D : only need to be over 18 to possess
Basegun could help people who encounter a gun and wish to know the legal category to know if they can own it. For instance, it happens frequently that people find firearms of their deceased grandparents.