User Experience
User experience involves every interaction a user has with an agency.
More News and Events on User Experience
448 posts
New USAGov Program Aims to Help Agencies Market Within the Federal Government
The Outreach and Marketing team from USAGov helps agencies amplify their key messages through a variety of channels.
Redesigning an Intranet Site: Final Stages, Launch, and Lessons Learned
Helpful lessons from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) on the redesign of an intranet.
Why Your Team Needs Its Own Style Guide and Where to Start
Learn how creating your own style guide can help facilitate development for agency websites. Review best practices, lessons learned, and examples from the U.S. Web Design System, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Using Journey Mapping to Streamline Processes Across Agencies
How one team used journey mapping to improve the customer experience for newly naturalized citizens attempting to travel abroad.
3 Ways to Manage Research Projects Remotely
Being a remote team doesn’t mean you should forgo any of your research rituals. It means finding different ways to do them.
Finding Usability Testers: Tips from an Army Recruiter
An Army recruiter shares how her training in the Army has helped in her approach to usability testing, and gives a peek inside how usability testing works for USAJOBS.gov at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Slack AMA Connect Standards Team with Public
The Standards team hosted their first AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the public in August. Here’s a breakdown of the big topics discussed during the chat.
A Conversation With ITIF About the State of Federal Government Websites
Since it’s been nearly six months since their report was released, we wanted to check in with ITIF and see what they’ve learned, what they’ve heard from agencies and what their future plans are to build on this research.
Design and Conflict: Do You Know Your Conflict Style?
Building empathy towards users is always a part of the UX process, but it’s not always common practice to build empathy towards our teammates. Here’s an idea to proactively address conflict and build empathy through understanding on your team.
CFPB Serves up Financial Tips to Seniors
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Meals on Wheels America have created multilingual educational resources about financial scams that target the elderly which can be easily distributed to seniors in the communities they serve, and downloaded or ordered in bulk for free by the general public. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Consumer Education &
Government Launches Login.Gov to Simplify Access to Public Services
Joel Minton, a member of the U.S. Digital Service, is working with GSA’s Technology Transformation Service as the director of login.gov. Tom Mills is the Chief Technology Architect at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In early April, the U.S. Digital Service and 18F launched login.gov, a single sign-on solution for government websites that will enable
Shedding Light on Underserved Users through Research
How user interviews helped spotlight the needs of a previously forgotten group. We may not like to admit it, but, most web services or sites have users that (for whatever reason) just aren’t well understood—and in turn, not well served. Conducting user interviews and making sure you get good participation from those groups can help
The Data Briefing: Federal Government Pioneers in Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Training
When I was in the private sector, around the year 2000, I worked for an information technology (IT) consulting company as a project manager and developer. On one project, I provided support for early mobile devices given to medical students. I worked in a small office around the corner from the cardio-respiratory simulator (CRS). The
The Cutting EDGE: New Virtual Training Prepares First Responders for Active Shooter Incidents
Amidst the chaos of an active shooter event, preparedness is key to a seamless, swift and effective response—and a new video game funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory just might do the trick.
Have You Critiqued Your Critique Process?
DEMO Whenever I hear someone complain about the process of a design critique, I’m always a bit surprised. Blame it on the fact
The Data Briefing: Ten Years of Digital Transformation—Lessons Learned
Since 2007, a major consulting firm has conducted an annual survey on organizations’ “Digital IQ.” In the ten years of organizations grappling with digital transformation, what has been learned?
Vets.gov: A Modern Software Development Environment in Government
When people think of government software, they often think of COBOL and PowerBuilder 5, with manual software deploys every three to six months on a fixed number of machines in a government-run data center. This perception is sometimes justified, but sometimes entirely wrong. Regardless, the perception makes many developers reluctant to work for the government
VA Innovators Network Program: Ahead of the Curve in Healthcare Innovation
VA Innovators Network Program Selected as FedHealth IT Innovation Award Winner This month, FedHealth IT announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Innovators Network Program was selected as a 2017 recipient of the FedHealthIT Innovation Award. FedHealth IT recognized 25 Federal Health
Improving Customer Experience with Digital Personas
Keeping the customer’s needs front and center is important when developing new digital tools. We recently developed a set of user personas as part of our work to establish a more robust—and data informed—understanding of the individuals that engage digitally with the National Archives (NARA). User personas are fictional, but realistic representations of key audience