Project DC: Service Redesign UX Case Study

Service Design inside the District of Columbia Government

Building location of OLRCB and DSLBD

Project Scope:

In an effort to be more resident-focused, the District of Columbia recognizes the significant downstream effects of service touch points between residents and employees. The City Administrator offered thirteen designers the opportunity to apply the UX design process to their multi-year study and service redesign initiative.

In early 2019, the District set out to gain a more comprehensive understanding of resident and employee needs with the goal of improving service and satisfaction for the City. The project was split into three components:

1. Research and planning
2. Synthesis and documentation
3. Design and replay

Over the course of the spring season, General Assembly surveyed 1,500 DC residents, of which more than 100 were interviewed. In the past three weeks, General Assembly continued the project by investigating the perspectives of key stakeholders and government employees. We focused on the working relationships between agencies and the seven internal service agencies:

• DCHR (DC Human Resources)
• DGS (Dept. of General Services)
• OCP (Office of Contracting and Procurement)
• OCTO (Office of the Chief Technology Officer
• ODR (Office of Disability Rights
• OLRCB (Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining)
• ORM (Office of Risk Mgmt.)

While limited in scope, this provides the District a sample of the internal discovery component needed to understand the full service ecosystem.

Research Plan

With a vast amount of work ahead, my colleague, Mari, and I created a research plan to help guide us through the entire process. This included understanding the project objectives, audience, locations, methods, and outcomes.

Objectives: What are perspectives, pain points, and challenges that DC employees face when working for resident/internal facing agencies? What opportunities are there for improvements in service design that will optimize employee satisfaction and resident experiences?

Audience: In addition to the DC Mayor’s office, our project serves front-end DC employees (resident-facing agencies) and back-end employees (internal service agencies).

Locations:

• Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining (OLRCB)
• Department of Small and Local Business Development (DLSBD)
• Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD)

Methods: Interviews, Affinity maps, Personas, Journey maps

Outcomes: Perspectives, Service touchpoint trends, Insights, Challenges/Pain points, Service recommendations

Mari and I executed interviews and synthesized our data simultaneously. I took our resulting insights and created personas and scenarios that provide a more comprehensive context to employee experiences.

Interviews

Due to the large scope of the project, only a small percentage of the District’s agencies were interviewed in total. Of the Planning and Economic Development cluster, we interviewed employees from 3 agencies: OLRCB, DSLBD, and DHCD.

We interviewed a collective 15 individuals: 8 males and 7 females. Their roles include (but are not limited to):

• Executive Assistant
• Attorney
• Program Manager
• Chief of Staff
• Chief Information Officer

The client assigned three required interview questions regarding each of the seven internal agencies, listed below in red. Between each of the questions, we were able to ask the interviewees to elaborate on their responses. Additional questions were asked to gain a more comprehensive context of their perspectives.

Required questions and additional context questions. For OLRCB, we asked about the other 6 internal agencies, but refrained from asking interviewees about their own agency.

For planning and organizational purposes, we assigned ourselves the role of either facilitator or note taker. In addition to note taking, with the interviewees’ permission, we recorded the interviews to reference during the processing and synthesis phase.

Organizational chart designating interview dates and roles.

Data Processing

To process our interviews, we referenced our notes and recordings to import each concise pain point, improvement, and like into a spreadsheet. Each piece of data was classified by interview ID, the interviewee’s agency, and the agency he or she was referring to. Additionally, we began categorizing our data by colors and tags to aid in our upcoming affinity mapping exercise.

Screenshot of a piece of our spreadsheet organization. We specifically decided against using a clear set of predetermined tags so as not to limit ourselves later during the synthesis stage.

Synthesis

Due to the qualitative nature of our data, we decided that affinity mapping would be the most logical way of visualizing major trends. We were able to arrange each data point into the 5 Pillars of Service: People, Place, Prop, Process, and Partner, which revealed which areas were most successful and which areas had the most room for improvement.

The widest view of all our affinity maps is most useful for recognizing major trends. The most evident trends occurred when people or processes were involved within the service interaction.

Once we classified data into their respective service components, we were able to cluster them in a way that showed how multiple variables (agency, category, tag, etc.) related to each other. Ultimately we grouped stickies by similar themes. We synthesized the likes on one side of the boards but found that the blue improvement stickies and red challenge stickies were often getting at the same core issues, so we grouped together.

Once we classified data into their respective service components, we were able to cluster them in a way that showed how multiple variables (agency, category, tag, etc.) related to each other. In grouping perspectives and quotes by similar themes, we found that improvements and challenges often intersected with each other around the same core issues.

Sample section: DCHR’s process pain points and improvements

Resulting Trends and Insights

After synthesizing our research and looking at major trends, we identified four key takeaways. However, for nearly every point there was an opposite opinion, so we had to look closely at each comment under context.

Success

Success when working with other agencies is working towards a shared goal, respecting subject matter expertise, exhibiting commitment, and being able to compromise.

“Success is knowing another agency will do all they can to get me to the finish line.”

This insight was a result of our additional question, “what does success mean to you when working with additional agencies?” We realized that the ability to collaborate with others was a key component in helping employees feel more achievement in working towards a goal.

Proactiveness

Proactive communication and involvement can prevent challenges down the line.

“Sometimes things are done, they’re handed down, and now we’re cleaning up afterwards. We’d rather have some time to speak with them prior to implementation.”

Early communication and involvement is highly valued, especially among DCHR and OCTO processes and procedures. Instead of putting out fires, they can prevent more fires by putting in fire-proofing measures, to save future time and resources. Examples of this include knowing of changes to the DPM, purchase order memorandums, and intentional resource sharing.

Liaisons

Labor liaisons help streamline information exchange.

“Our internal liaison is an easy single point of contact.”

Agencies with dedicated agency liaisons or who had frequent interactions with other agencies’ liaisons netted more positive insights, especially in regard to communication and access of information likely because the liaison provides a convenient single point of contact.

Personal Connections

Bypassing official processes in favor of personal connections was a recurrent workaround. Even in agencies well-regarded as communicative and efficient, official processes lack a certain ease-of-use.

“If you know, in advance, the people to talk to, I think it makes your experience better.”

This was the most recurrent single item that we found consistent among all roles and all agencies. Strong personal connections made through training, physical vicinity, and interagency/liaison involvement can increase effectiveness through collaboration.

To put these major insights in context, in the next section we introduce three user personas that are fictional, but created based on the employees we interviewed and the common pain points and shared experiences they face.

Context: Personas and Journey Maps

Three fictional user personas based on employees we interviewed

We use the following scenarios to get a snapshot of non-system specific challenges they might encounter at work, and the associated feelings they experience throughout the process. This step aims to help the client step into the shoes of DC employees.

Lack of advanced notice leads to ineffective rushed training, resulting in wasted additional effort.

Lack of guidance and transparency led to redundant effort in finding wanted software.

A lack of updates in process obscure easily resolved bottlenecks, resulting in delays

Recommendations

Keeping the purpose of our project in mind, our main recommendation to the client is to consider developing a more robust agency liaison program. Our hypothesis is that this will increase efficiency by providing actual human point of contact, while simultaneously streamlining contact channels and minimizing inconsistency. For example, we saw firsthand that both OLRCB and DCHB mentioned difficulty in knowing who to contact about DCHR issues, but DSLBD found their DCHR liaison to be an effective single point of contact.

General next steps include conducting secondary research about other local government initiatives to increase collaboration in the workplace or restructuring efforts for the ultimate benefit of their resident.

Earlier during this process, we sent out a survey to Certified Business Enterprises working with the DSLBD to gauge their experience. We didn’t end up being able to synthesize the responses we received during the scope of this project, but analyzing that data against the agency interviews we conducted could also provide valuable insight.