Collaboration is key. Let’s talk.
My background in journalism and philosophy has trained me to be able to talk with anyone, and listen. This enables me to work with people who think deeply about complex issues and translate arcane specialties into clear concepts that help everyone deliver better outcomes, more easily.
Building Effective Design/Workflow Processes from Scratch
Being brought on as Lead Designer at Open Garden was my first experience at a startup, and my first experience coming into a design position where there was no preexisting design nor development processes.
Working with the Lead Developer and the VP of Engineering, I proposed we create a workflow process that included prioritization of feature development based on the user research I’d collected, a step for technical review of proposed features based on my wireframing work, and a sprint for usability testing and iteration.
This reduced the technical cost and debt that working with Material Design (which offered affordances without code) and poor-testing feature work had incurred before my arrival.
Working with Policy Experts in Civic Tech
In working as a Senior Service Designer for process modernization at Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Administration (HHS ASA), I was happy to work with some excellent Policy Experts on our efforts.
For our effort to create channels and processes for more efficient and timely budget communication standards across the massive ASA (top image), I worked with an in-team Policy Expert to break down the critical deadlines for budget requests and reporting, and what regulatory standards needed to be fulfilled for each. I then mapped these out on a fiscal year calendar, along with which systems would be engaged for data collection and reporting.
This led to us creating the first existing guidance for components across HHS ASA. In turn, we saw, by and large, offices within the ASA reporting efficiencies in their quarterly planning, Leadership and stakeholders across HHS ASA responded positively to this change.
As similar process also expedited my work on mapping how leadership’s goals of reorganization might be seen by components within ASA. Again, working with a policy expert helped me unpack terms and relationships that were often understood but undefined. As a result, we were able to build guidance for both HHS ASA at large and for individual teams about what steps (data collection, reporting structure, etc.) they’d need to plan for.
Bringing Engineers into Usability Testing
On a personal note: I love doing this. More often than not, it helps developers see usability testing not as a black-box criticism of their work that send them back to the drawing board, but as a useful tool for helping them build things that people can use. The first time I operationalized this, the participating developers became allies; one even said, “I thought this was easy to use, but I realized that it was because I built it.”