Design Challenge

In early 2019, the District of Columbia 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 service redesign project was split into three parts: research and planning, synthesis and documentation, and design and replay.

Recommendation: Robust Agency Liaison Program

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.

♦️User Interviews

Due to the large scope of the project, only a small percentage of the District’s agencies were interviewed in total. As a collective cohort, we interviewed 17 agencies, including both internal service agencies and resident-facing agencies. Of the Planning and Economic Development cluster, we interviewed employees from three agencies: the Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining (OLRCB), the Dept. of Small and Local Business Development (DSLBD), and the Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). Over the span of two weeks, my team and I interviewed a collective 15 individuals: 8 males and 7 females.

Research Takeaways

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

2. Proactive communication and involvement can prevent challenges down the line.

3. Labor liaisons help streamline information exchange.

4. 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.

*for more details on my research methodology for this project, please visit the full case study here.

♦️Personas and User Journeys

Using our 15 interviewees’ roles and background, we created three personas to represent the people we talked with and their perspectives on interacting with the internal service agencies. In the same vein, we examined some of the work processes we heard during the interviews, and created 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 and audience step into the shoes of DC employees.

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 residents.

Earlier during this project, we sent out a survey to Certified Business Enterprises (CBEs) working with the DSLBD to gauge their experiences. Though we didn’t incorporate their responses into our recommendations during the scope of this project, analyzing that data against the agency interviews we conducted could also provide valuable insights.

Things I Learned:

♦️User Interviews

Learned when to ask follow-up questions and how to keep conversation flowing in order to understand interviewee’s full perspective on the question.

♦️Data Synthesis

Use my background in data analysis to logically organize interview data and visualize data points through affinity mapping to reveal areas of success and improvement.

♦️User Personas and Journeys

Created three personas and their respective journeys using aggregated information from interviews to accurately demonstrate employee experiences and feelings throughout their journey.

View my other student projects