At 1776, Civic Digital Fellowship Declares Independence from Silicon Valley
Too often, if one tries to think about the latest innovations in the world of tech, the mind races westward to Silicon Valley, Palo Alto and Stanford University’s tree-lined campus. Yet if one considers the sheer amount of technological knowhow that goes into government’s smooth operation, shouldn’t Washington, D.C. also be a mecca for the nation’s best and brightest engineers and web designers?
That was the founding purpose of the Civic Digital Fellowship: to give college students a chance to use their technology skills for social good through a summer internship with the federal government. On June 20, a trip by the Civic Digital Fellows to startup hub 1776 served to reinforce this mission.
1776 fills a niche as a global incubator and seed fund for startups, connecting them with a global community that provides the intellectual, social and financial capital these startups need to succeed. With a focus on entities promoting social good that are looking to break into highly regulated fields, 1776 takes an interest in supporting as many D.C.-based startups as possible within the confines of its Washington and Crystal City locations.
One of these, General Assembly, offers training seminars and “boot camps” which hone specialized technological skills that narrow the global skills gap.
With that end in mind, the fellows of the Civic Digital Fellowship took part in a two-hour course directed by Zach Thomas to learn the particulars of User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI), two product skills that, while often paired together for the purpose of learning, are different in terms of their applications. Whereas UX is designing for how users experience and interact with a platform, UI is about the visual design of the interface. In short, the difference between the two is the difference between usability and approachability.
To illustrate this, Thomas asked the fellows to team up and asked them to design a basic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Their fascinating responses demonstrated the hierarchy entailed in creating these processes. For instance, many of these processes were prefaced with prerequisites, such as: “Assume all ingredients are in kitchen,” or “Assuming hunger.” From there, the teams’ strategies going forward diverged from each other, with some teams indulging a step-by-step process in the same vein as an instruction manual. But another utilized a flow chart method, proffering questions of the “yes” or “’no” variety before offering the user an outcome based on his or her answer to that prior question.
Afterwards, the fellows toured the 1776 workspace, followed by a half-hour meeting with Fifth Tribe, another startup operating under the 1776 auspices and working to promote branding. With only a few minutes left in their allotted time, they discussed what type of start-up organization might choose 1776 as a venue to advance its prospects of success.
The Civic Digital Fellowship is the first fully-funded data science and technology internship program for innovative students to solve pressing problems in federal agencies. It is the product of a collaboration between Coding it Forward, The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars and the U.S. Census Bureau. Together, they have brought fourteen talented technologists to Washington, D.C. to address pressing technical issues at the U.S. Census Bureau.
