User Experience

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.

Meghan Lazier

Feb 13, 2018

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.

Laura Godfrey

Feb 05, 2018

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.

Nicole Fenton

Jamie Albrecht

Oct 03, 2017

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).

Meghan Lazier

Sep 28, 2017

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.

Sep 25, 2017

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.

Andrea Sigritz

Sep 20, 2017

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.

Meghan Lazier

Sep 18, 2017

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 &

Erin Scheithe

Sep 11, 2017

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

Joel Minton

Tom Mills

Aug 28, 2017

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

Tyrus Manuel

Aug 17, 2017

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

Bill Brantley

Aug 09, 2017

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.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Aug 03, 2017

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

Meghan Lazier

Jul 31, 2017

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?

Bill Brantley

Jul 26, 2017

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

Alex Yale-Loehr

Raquel Romano

Jul 03, 2017

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

VA Center for Innovation

Jun 30, 2017

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

Archivist of the United States

Jun 20, 2017

Opening Public Services to Artificial Intelligence Assistants

“Hey, Computer, how do I access my public services?” Citizens will soon be able to ask their Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA) this question through an Emerging Citizen Technology open-sourced pilot program. The purpose of the initiative is to guide dozens of federal programs make public service information available through automated, self-service platforms for the home

Justin Herman

Jun 06, 2017

The New FEC.gov

Last week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unveiled their new website at FEC.gov. This new site is the result of a years-long collaboration with GSA’s 18F and features completely revamped tools for exploring campaign finance data. It provides user-centered content for understanding the reporting and compliance requirements for people participating in federal elections, redesigned tools

Noah Manger

Jennifer Thibault

Jun 06, 2017

Benefits of Accessible Design

According to the World Bank, approximately one billion people worldwide live with a disability, making up the world’s largest minority. Designing from an accessibility-first standpoint has the potential to benefit all stakeholders, not just people with disabilities, because accessible design typically delivers a better user experience. Currently many websites and digital platforms are inaccessible, which makes them difficult

Phillip Crawford

May 09, 2017

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