For a class on Online Dispute Resolution at Stanford, I am on a small team working to build an online mediation system for a local county court. Its budget was slashed and can no longer afford to provide in-person mediation to people who have filed suit for less than $10,000. We’re in the planning stages now, trying to figure out how mediation works step by step in the offline world — and how it might look online.
This is a first step at mapping out this basic task flow of a small claims mediation. I made it using XMind (free software to build mind maps and flow charts) and then laying the map over a three-tone background for stages.