Category: civic tech

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Enhancing parks & rec programs through human-centered design

My dog Biscuit enjoying a spring day at Fort Lowell Park in Tucson

I have the pleasure of presenting for the Arizona Parks and Recreation Association this week, and wanted to share my slide deck here (or see slide deck in Google Drive). I introduce human-centered design principles and practical methods to improve services and better meet the needs of visitors.

Some key takeaways:

  • Human-centered design is about creating public services around the real needs, experiences, and challenges of the people we serve — not around the policies that mandate them, the systems that deliver them, or the staff who provide them.
  • Gather community feedback on all things at all stages and from all levels, no matter your day-to-day jobs. Start with community needs, get feedback early and often, and then iterate, iterate, iterate.
  • Get out there to learn what’s working and what’s not:
    • Solicit feedback from the public through user interviews, impression testing, and preference testing
    • Run surveys and focus groups if you like, but follow best practices to avoid survey fatigue and groupthink
    • Observe user behaviors through ethnograph-ish research, usability testing, and wayfinding testing
    • Do the thing yourself by putting yourself in the user’s shoes
  • Follow good design principles:
    • Be welcoming, familiar, and simple to use with few steps
    • Make it easy for people to complete their goals
    • Encourage the right behaviors from visitors while keeping it human
    • Provide help when people need it and have no dead ends
  • Keep it lightweight and low budget:
    • Solicit feedback on the fly by intercepting passersby in busy locations
    • Recruit people in the field and where they are
    • Run talk-back boards to passively gather feedback on a regular basis
    • Follow recipes in The UX Cookbook

Government agencies are under increased scrutiny at all levels, and must demonstrate their value and impact now more than ever. By incorporating efficient feedback mechanisms into to our everyday work and fostering human-centered cultures within our organizations, we can better meet our public service missions and serve our communities.

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Rapid research with County Veterans Service Officers

In May was the annual conference for NACVSO, the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers. I’m currently working on a team that’s designing tools for VA-accredited representatives, which includes VSOs, attorneys, and claims agents. This was a great opportunity to speak directly with the hundreds of CVSOs at the conference, a big segment of our audience.

Rebecca holding a paper prototype and an exhibit booth, getting feedback from two passersby
Preference testing paper prototypes

Similar to my days at the University of Arizona’s Tiny Café, I worked with our team to put together some rapid, less structured, in-person research that could happen quickly by intercepting passersby.

Over the course of a few days we staffed a booth in the exhibit hall and indeed, we learned a lot from this experience. Our methods included:

  • Unstructured interviews. We’d identified some gaps in our knowledge and topics we wanted to explore. Officers stopped by and we engaged them in conversation about their work, our work, and ideas for building solutions together. This helped us more deeply understand their goals, behaviors, and challenges with current systems and processes.
  • Preference testing. We had printed prototypes and asked them which of the options they preferred and why. This helped us narrow down our options and in some cases, combine features from multiple options.
  • Concept testing. We had some ideas, printed on paper, and asked for their impressions and feedback. This helped us learn if we were headed in the right direction.
  • Talk-back boards. We wrote prompts on a large poster board and invited responses and feedback to the responses.

We gathered over 90 data points, producing insights and recommendations that will guide our work going forward. We also grew our participant panel for future research opportunities. Remote teams don’t often get the chance to immerse themselves in the community in which they serve. It was a worthwhile and unique experience!

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Break down silos and scale impact with research operations

It was a privilege to present last week at Service Design in Government, an international community event for anyone involved in designing, delivering, and commissioning public services. I presented with my colleague, Fan Huang, and we discussed ResearchOps in the government sector. Here’s the video recording in Vimeo, or click the image below to watch. A PDF of the slide deck is also below.

Zoom screenshot with Rebecca and a slide about research operations
Break down silos and scale impact with research operationsDownload

Some of the resources mentioned: