GovPlays
Date
May 2019-June 2019
Team
Amanda Kennedy
Raelin Musaraca (Faculty Advisor)
Methods
PESTLE
Interviews
Value Flow
Storyboarding
Think Alouds
Prototyping
My Role
User Researcher, UX Designer
PESTLE Analysis
The Opportunity
How can we support sharing and implementing best practices related to digital services across local and state government?
Through an Independent Study for my Master of Human-Computer Interaction program at Carnegie Mellon University, I developed a platform for local and state government leaders to create and share best practices that can be replicated or iterated upon by other governments. I drew upon the format of a "playbook" to inform the format of the platform since it is
Here's how I got there:
Using my PESTLE analysis as a starting point, I uncovered Product Opportunity Gaps by interpreting SET factors. (Social, Economic, Technology)
These frameworks helped me to hone in on a few areas: awareness, job translation, job opportunities themselves and helped me understand what topics to touch on in interviews with possible target users.
I interviewed the following groups of target users:
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Two hiring managers in government
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Two designers seeking employment in government
I decided on these groups of target users in order to understand needs from each side of the recruiting and hiring process within government. I selected interviews as a method because open-ended questions can help elicit their needs and any breakdowns that have happened through the job search and hiring process for technologists within local and state government.
Through each 30-minute semi-structured interview, I sought to answer the following questions:
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How do you nurture local tech talent to work in government?
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How do you shape awareness in and make the case for local/state government leaders to invest in technology teams and resources?
Stakeholder Value Flow
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I synthesized my interview data via a value flow diagram that highlighted the relationships and value transactions between stakeholders within the local/state government hiring domain.
Creating this value flow helped me to uncover a variety of breakdowns within the system, including:
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Between governments, there is minimal sharing of best practices regarding digital transformation across institutions.
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Procurement of technology often follows waterfall process that negatively impacts scope, budget, and user experience.
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Local and state governments are not always aware of existing nation-wide initiatives and opportunities for digital services.
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Local and state governments aren’t always aware of the most fitting professional groups to tap into, especially for recruiting.
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It is difficult for local and state governments to match salaries and benefits of technologists in private industry.
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Local and state governments are not aware of full range of relevant college and university programs they could tap into for recruiting tech talent within their region.
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Because the idea of technologists (UX designers, developers, data scientists, product managers) working in government is newer, Not always inclined to hire technologists within government, especially if local and state governments are used to outsourcing technology work.
Four needs emerged from user research interviews and the value flow model:
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Local/state government leaders need to understand the value of hiring tech talent internally.
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Local/state government leaders need to form partnerships with local universities and colleges in order to nurture tech talent.
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Local/state government need to create pathways for local tech organizations to contribute to procurement opportunities.
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Local/state governments need to collaborate on best practices to support digital transformation initiatives, including hiring of tech talent.
As I created the model, I was in the midst of packing for Code for America Summit, a "three-day...opportunity for public servants, advocates, entrepreneurs, technologists, and volunteers to get together in one room and tackle some of government’s biggest challenges in the digital age," according to their web site.
The above model helped me to realize that everyone at the Code for America Summit has already bought into digital transformation within government, so they have that awareness and are taking steps toward cultural/systemic change. I knew that whatever research came next, I needed to include both people involved with government innovation as well as those who are less familiar.
Moving forward, I also chose to target government employees instead of job seekers because the government space is most in need of cultural and systemic change to provide more opportunities for technology talent.
Code for America Summit
GovPlays: Iteration 1
Attending sessions at the Code for America Summit gave me deeper insight into the needs that emerged from research. In multiple sessions, I heard this need emerge in conversation: "Local/state governments need to collaborate on best practices to support digital transformation initiatives, including hiring of tech talent."
I decided to move forward with developing a solution that could support sharing best practices, especially since this sort of solution could help solve for issues related to procurement, recruiting and hiring, and university partnerships through cross-pollination of what has worked and can be iterated upon from other governments.
Scene from an 18F lightning talk at Code for America Summit.
Based on the need for collaboration within government, I developed an initial concept called "GovPlays," a platform for local and state governments to create and share "Plays" for digital service initiatives that have successfully launched. Government employees could save these Plays to a repository called a "Playbook" I used the format of a "Playbook" because it is a relatively common term within the government innovation sphere—organizations like the federal government's 18F and the City of Boston's New Urban Mechanics have launched their own playbooks to help other government entities implement best practices that they have cultivated.
I started conceptualizing GovPlays by sketching out some initial screens:
Then I created a greyscale, medium-fidelity version of what a GovPlays homepage could look like. I created a few tweaks of this homepage as I began to test it with government leaders and realized that I had the opportunity to more clearly define GovPlays after each think aloud:
Version 1 of the GovPlays Landing Page. It did not clearly demonstrate the framework of a Play and a Playbook, thus leaving users in the dark on the concept and value of GovPlays.
Version 2 of the GovPlays Landing Page. I used incorporated some simple visuals of what a Play could look like. It was a start.
I had played around with a few hero tag lines and settled on "Collaborate on the future of government together" because of the collaborative nature of the web site. I also thought it would be important to call out what a Play and a Playbook are so that people could easily understand the framework of the platform. People also needed to easily search play categories.
Testing the Concept of GovPlays with Government Leaders in Digital Services
After I developed the landing page, I set up think alouds of GovPlays with three government leaders: a Chief Data Officer of a major city, a Digital Services Manager at a medium-sized city, and a Chief Data Officer of a medium-sized county.
I learned the following points that helped me to further refine GovPlays:
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I needed to show—not tell—what a Play was from the get-go. Providing the definitions of Play and Playbook were not enough. Users needed to visually engage with a Play and understand its framework to understand if it could be something that is valuable to them, especially for users who are not familiar with playbooks like those put out by 18F and the City of Boston.
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Ideas are a dime a dozen, but the true value of GovPlays is the action plan of a Play that government leaders can learn from and iterate upon. Through these think alouds, I learned that people would not come to GovPlays to find inspiration for ideas. Instead, they would come with an idea in mind that they are interested in understanding how other cities, counties or states have followed similar paths.
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In order for GovPlays to be easy to use, I needed to think through how someone would read a Play. Participants could start to imagine what a successful published Play could look like from the landing page, but they were less clear on the process of writing a Play. As I moved forward with the prototype, I needed to break down the pieces of a Play in order to format a Play template that users could fill in themselves.
Using Personas to Inform Design
As I further developed GovPlays beyond the landing page, I wanted to draw upon user needs, both related to the core value of GovPlays and the types of content they would need in order to be successful in their jobs. As a result, I created three personas, all based on user research interviews and background research. Creating personas clarified the different levels of awareness related to government innovation and digital services, which helped me to focus on plain language that anyone could understand, regardless of their awareness level.
Second Iteration: GovPlays Prototype
Still working in greyscale, I expanded the number of pages within GovPlays:
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View Plays: A user can view the available plays written by other government leaders.
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Play Example: I wrote an example play.
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Create a Play: A template for creating a Play.
View Plays.
Create a Play.
Example Play.
Then, I set up another round of think alouds, this time with four government consultants that incorporated these pages as well as the landing page. They helped me to uncover the following issues:
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How can I make GovPlays stand out? One of the participants pointed out a handful of similar platforms in the government innovation space: GovLaunch, The Atlas, and Urban Leap. I had been familiar with one of them (GovLaunch) but not others. I realized I needed to take a step back and assess how GovPlays stands out amidst these "competitors."
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GovPlays makes more sense for people working within government. I initially thought that GovPlays could also work as an opportunity for consultants who work with governments as a way to advertise their services, but these folks did not see the value of this platform within their daily workflow.
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When creating a Play, Key Questions are not as useful as Steps. People need to take concrete actions and iterate upon them; questions felt too broad.
Competitive Analysis
Based on the point brought up during a think aloud, I decided to better understand other possible competitors in the government innovation space to understand how GovPlays compares and contrasts and how it could further stand out from the following platforms:
GovPlays Meets Project Management
Evaluating other platforms helped me to realize an opportunity for GovPlays: In addition to being a place where government technology leaders could create and share action plans for initiatives and projects that could be replicated, it could also include project management workflows to help bring those plans to life within their own cities, counties and states. The other platforms focus more on the ideas themselves, which I found in my user research are not as important as the steps that made them happen and that can be iterated upon. UrbanLeap does include a project management system, but it is missing the replicability of best practices. GovPlays is the best of both worlds.
With this new feature in mind, I developed two design artifacts:
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A journey map of how a user could become aware of GovPlays, receive buy-in from their manager to use it, select a Play, and initiate a project management flow to implement it:
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A flow diagram of the project management workflow:
Final Version of GovPlays
I added a few more changes to the final version of the GovPlays prototype:
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I added a color palette that I loved from the Housing Center at the Terner Center at UC-Berkeley.
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I made a simpler header by integrating elements into the pages and ultimately putting more focus on Sign In/Register. I also put a creative spin on my hero image (thanks to my advisor, Raelin, for the idea.)
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I added a registration flow.
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I added a "Your Play" page, with an empty state containing "Recommended Plays" to get a user started and a canvas for adding and creating Plays.
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I revised the "Create a Play" page to make it easier to fill out and more applicable to what users want to read.
Next Steps
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I would create wireframes of the project management workflow.
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I would flesh out the standalone page where users can find and search Plays beyond those listed on the initial landing page.
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I would evaluate this version with more government leaders in technology.
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Because the web site needs content in order for it to would be valuable, I would think about that initial content strategy. One idea that I have is to set up conversations with government leaders across state, local, and county governments in the United States and write the first plays on their behalf. I would make sure that the government leaders are bought into the Plays and that the details related to the projects represented within them are accurate (which is a different strategy than what GovLaunch has taken: writing case studies and making cities "claim" them as a way of setting up an account).
Project Reflections
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As someone who will be working with government after I graduate from the MHCI program at Carnegie Mellon, I loved working on this project. It was exhilarating to dive into the space, learn from government and government-adjacent leaders contribute a possible idea to the domain.
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A big constraint for this project has been time. I only had six weeks to complete this project. Looking back, I wish I could have better utilized my time because I made a lot of changes to the design at the end that I wish I could have tested earlier, but for the most part, I made the most of the time allotted.
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I realized how lonely it can be to work on a solo human-centered design project from end to end. I missed opportunities to collaborate and bounce ideas off of others as I have had on other projects in both industry and classes. I am grateful that most other human-centered design projects that I will tackle from here on out will naturally involve collaboration. If I were to continue working on GovPlays, I would want to involve others in the process.
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The scope of my project changed a few times over six weeks—from connecting tech talent to small- and medium-sized cities to connecting tech talent to state and local government to fostering knowledge sharing across state and local government. I leaned into the twists and turns and was excited to see how my project progressed.
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Thank you so much to my advisor, Raelin Musaraca, for accompanying me on this journey! I am grateful for your insight and guidance and hope that I can be half as good a practitioner as you are someday.