Design for Civic Tech: How the Work Gets Done
I’ve been a designer and a design leader for almost 20 years, with experience in a wide variety of companies and industries via in-house and consulting roles. Last year I realized I was ready for a major change. In the first article of this three-part series, I shared some thoughts about why I made the move to civic tech after decades in the private sector: I wanted more purpose in my work. I wanted the motivation and satisfaction I felt in my volunteer work to be deeply embedded in my career as well. I’m just a few months into this journey and while I know I’m on the right path, I’m definitely still figuring out the day-to-day of my role. Each week the angle of my learning curve becomes more visible (spoiler: it’s steep!), and I have more lessons and observations to share from this new vantage point, to help others already on or considering this journey to navigate it with more awareness and community alignment.
Learning the Language
For many years, I have adopted and assimilated the dialects of the various companies and industries where I’ve worked, most recently the diverse world of DevSecOps where I spent almost eight years. Joining civic tech required me to start over. Government is a complex domain with its own norms, concepts, and language. Acronyms are constantly used as shorthand for agencies, programs, contracts, and rulebooks.?
For example: Your work might support the VA (Department of Veterans Affairs) one week and the next you’re partnering with HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) or advising HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development). If you work for a company pursuing federal contracts, you’ll need your CAGE (Commercial & Government Entity) code and you might need to apply for a security clearance using e-QIP (Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing).?
There is a lot to take in, and I’ve been told that it can take years to become fluent in the language of government. I’m leaning hard on my ability to quickly synthesize information and I take copious notes. Every week I pick up a few new terms and concepts while being patient with myself and the learning process.?
Balancing Business Development and Career Development?
While I’m already well versed in private sector contract paperwork and language (such as RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, and SOWs), government contracting has introduced me to the SOO (Statement of Objectives), the PWS (Performance Work Statement), QASPs (Quality Assurance Surveillance Plans), and Tech Challenges to name just a few. I’ll admit that I’m not yet clear on when and why various items are included (or not) but I've become quite skilled at reading and responding to them.
Staff management requires a different approach. Within private-sector agencies I was placing designers on contracts that averaged six to nine months, which meant they had the opportunity to partner with multiple clients in a single year and quickly broaden their skills. If they weren’t excited about an opportunity, well, at least they wouldn’t work on it very long. While managing a design team for a software company, I kept the designers focused on the same product for years but our changing roadmaps meant they were solving different problems from quarter to quarter.?
Government contracts vary widely in length and sometimes include “option years” following the initial phase. The work moves more slowly, in part because there is a strong focus on human-centered research (a good thing!). Because some contracts last a year or longer, I have to think differently about hiring and career development: How can designers stay motivated and continue building new skills while helping our clients feel stable and supported? How can designers stay excited about the work when shipping something tangible takes longer than it might have in their previous experiences? These are questions I regularly ask myself and our design managers.
Designing for Everyone
Some of the ways design in civic tech is practiced differently than in the private sector were unsurprising, and this was part of the appeal of making the jump.
For example, designing for accessibility is an afterthought in some companies, subject to budget cuts and the changing priorities of leaders in other areas of the business. In my last article, I noted Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as being core to civic tech, and it’s everyone’s job to help ensure citizens with disabilities have full access to government services. At Coforma, we make it the first priority rather than the last.
This necessitates a move away from a mindset wherein the needs of some humans are classed as “edge cases.” I’ve seen a lot of positive discourse about this recently in the design community, recognizing that this mindset negatively affects people from a variety of marginalized groups. Everyone benefits when designs are accessible, usable, and appealing, and the awareness of “universal design” principles is high in civic tech. This depth of commitment is pushing me to higher levels of knowledge and advocacy.
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Another key difference is in the use of design systems. In the private sector, every company creates and maintains its own design system, and doing this work is a point of pride for many designers (and rightly so). By and large, however, federal government agencies use the United States Web Design System (USWDS) as a basis for their own digital design. This creates a high degree of consistency across a variety of agency websites, allows new features to be built more quickly, and minimizes training time for designers shifting from one digital property to another.?
Measuring Success
Over many years I learned to think about design in the context of the business measures that directly impacted how design could and would be performed: total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), serviceable obtainable market (SOM), return on investment (ROI), conversion, product-led growth, and shareholder returns. We shipped alphas that were crafted to serve the needs of a few potential customers and hoped the design decisions we made for them would scale as product-market fit was achieved and adoption increased. We measured success almost entirely in terms of revenue and brand cachet.
Civic tech is grounded in a different proposition: Foster better relationships between government and members of the public, and minimize friction for citizens who seek to obtain government benefits to which they’re entitled. Much of our work must comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act and success is measured in reduced burden, not increased revenue.
While this is not entirely divorced from the private sector mindset, it does allow designers to reframe key questions in a decidedly human-centered way: How should we prioritize and make decisions when our total addressable market is the entire USA? How can we benefit the widest possible audience with this work? How can we calculate the burden of each step in this process, and how much can we reduce that burden? I’m thrilled to work in an environment where these types of questions are being asked and answered.
To learn more about working in civic tech:
This is part two in a three-part series about getting started in civic tech as a designer. Read part one, and stay tuned for part three where I’ll share real-life stories from civic tech designers in the field.
About Melissa Casburn
Melissa Casburn is Coforma’s VP of Design. She is a seasoned design leader with 20+ years of experience leading cross-functional project and design teams across a variety of industries. Her skills range from design operations, project management, and program management to systems thinking and creating order from chaos. She has strong interests in legacy and enterprise software modernization, org optimization, and ethics in tech.
About Coforma
Coforma crafts creative solutions and builds technology products that elevate human needs. They’re impactful by design. Visit coforma.io/culture/ to learn more about what makes them unique.