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Digital Transformation to Get People the Services They Deserve
Websites of the Office of the Attorney General [OAG] play a crucial role in providing essential information and services to the people that live in their states. The goal of this work was to illuminate opportunities to help people find, understand and quickly take action on the services the OAG provides.
The Situation
The collaboration of government teams with expertise in engineering, design, research, and product management used to be uncommon, but that is no longer the case. These multidisciplinary technologists now work closely with civil servants at all levels of government to enhance service delivery within the government and to the public.
This work was an example of the collaboration across teams within government and the partnership with external partners to deliver human-centered products and services.
Design Challenge
We focused on three key areas:
- Helping people understand the functions of the Office of the Attorney General.
- Making it clear when and how to file a written consumer complaint to the mediation unit online and enabling OAG teams to quickly take action after the complaint is filed.
- Communicating the vision of the elected Attorney General and how the office is executing against their vision.
We prioritized these key areas based on our understanding of the greatest need for the greatest number of people. Then, we validated these assumptions during the kickoff with stakeholders.
Approach
This project followed a “discovery sprint” model, an approach that was beginning to be recognized as a best practice at USDS when I was doing my tour of service. Discovery sprints are a rev of the OG Design Sprint first introduced by Google Ventures.
Understanding the Problem
Getting Started
The purpose of a discovery sprint is to identify root causes, issues, and opportunities, not to solve them in this time window.
It's really important for the sprint team to get aligned quickly. So, initial immersion typically happens during a one day workshop with the full team.
During our kickoff workshop, we validated our proposed focus areas with the full team. This helped us set expectations from day one.
Mixed-Methods Research
I designed a mixed-methods research plan that accounted for the opportunities and risks associated with the discovery sprint model.
- Diary Studies: 458 calls to the OAG Switchboard Team were captured to understand why people call and how they get help.
- Click Analysis: We asked people where they would click to get help on the OAG website, as well as, other OAG websites.
- Landscape Analysis: We looked at all 50 OAG websites to better understand how other office’s organize their information and position themselves to the public.
- Surveys: We launched intercept surveys on the file a complaint page and on the submission page. The intercept surveys did not capture significant data to report back to the team.
One of the biggest risks was we didn’t have time to conduct multiple rounds of research.
To combat this, I launched parallel methods with an assumption that the data we got from the different methods would not be equal. Some methods would return valuable insight whereas others would not.
Diary entries the customer care or switchboard team captured ended up producing the richest dataset, a structured log of more than 450 calls.
Collaborative Workshop to Co-Create a Service Blueprint
To understand the opportunities to remove pain points during the consumer complaint process, I facilitated a virtual workshop with the Consumer Protection Mediation Team to define the touch points, channels and opportunities along the consumer complaint journey. This not only facilitated conversation amongst the team about how they work internally, it also gave space for the team to really think about the constituents.
What We Learned
- The top places people were referred to when they called to get help.
- The top (90% of the time) tasks people needed to complete on the OAG website.
- The perceptions people had of the OAG and the services it provides.
- What updates should be made to labels and the calls to action to make it easier to find information.
- What information organization, hierarchy, and interaction best practices would improve the usability of the site.
Define
The team synthesized the findings and presented the insights back to stakeholders and sprint sponsors. With the opportunities defined, the OAG team can now decide what the biggest priorities are to move into the next phase of design.
One of the areas we wanted to highlight was the online complaints process.
Problem Statement
We are going to decrease barriers for people to successfully file ready for mediation complaints in order to reduce the burden on staff by reducing the number of incomplete submitted complaints.
We are going to provide accessible, timely, accurate case status information in order to reduce the burden on staff by decreasing calls about case status.
We are going to provide plain language, accessible information about when and how to submit a claim in order to meet our users where they are situationally.
We are going to provide accessible, timely, accurate case status information in order to keep people updated on their case status.
The Users
The behavioral and attitudinal data from the research helped us understand the mental model of people seeking protection or support from the OAG.
Let’s take a look at how the website visitors think and behave.
Mental Model
What, So What, Now What?
What. I have been harmed by [person or business]. “I am scared and panicked.”
So What. This [action] is the consequence. “Can they actually do this? It can’t be true. ”
Now What. These [actions] can help me avoid the consequence. “Help me understand my options”
This mental model serves as a framework to inspire the team and encourage them to empathize with people from the initial trigger to taking action.
Service Blueprint
A service blueprint defines the opportunities to improve the file a complaint process online. During the ideation stage we'll explore these opportunities more.
Ideate
During this phase of the design process we wanted to create a shared understanding of the problem space, the users, the user journeys and potential experiments or hypothesis that would remove pain points.
After we gained even more clarity about how we could make the biggest impact, we honed in on this design challenge during the define stage:
Make it clear when and how to file a written consumer complaint to the mediation unit online and enable OAG teams to quickly take action after the complaint is filed.
Landscape Audit
A landscape audit of all 50 OAG's websites was completed focusing on how other office's
- Handle the branding of the office and the elected attorney general
- Communicate the services they offer
- Process complaints online
This foundational work will inform success metrics that’ll support decision making as we look to combine intuition with data to start the ideation process.
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Design
Results
This effort helped the team align and rally around the biggest opportunities:
- To make core services on the website findable and usable.
- To identify services in high demand and move resources or revisit the service design of those services to optimize delivery.
- To reduce the burden on staff by making information more clear and actionable.
With this shared understanding, the team can confidently move to the next phase of design, focusing on defining solutions that can improve the delivery of services.
This effort also successfully introduced a collaborative, human-centered approach to delivering services. The project highlighted the importance of customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) metrics and how creating a data baseline can support decision making.
By identifying the most important interactions and creating a plan to get a baseline understanding of the user’s perspective and behaviors, we are on the right track to improving overall constituent satisfaction.
Design artifacts at this stage included:
- Research Insights
- User Mental Model
- A Service Blueprint
- Low-Fidelity Prototypes
- A Plain Language Guide
Reflection
Establishing a Baseline
Often, when you start a digital transformation project there isn’t a solid baseline for customer experience (CX) or user experience (UX) metrics that can give you signal on the biggest user pain points.
To get a holistic view of the end-to-end experience the OAG provides, we first needed to identify the core digital and non-digital interactions people have with the OAG, then create a plan for understanding the user’s perspective and behaviors as they completed these interactions.
[Different Context, But Related: Measuring, Understanding and Designing Every Interaction]
"Ride Along" Partners
We would not have been successful if it wasn’t for the OAG team partnership. From day one, the team was a true “ride along” partner and not just standing on the sidelines.
Specifically, their willingness to be flexible with how they work, in order that we start capturing structured information, was a game changer. The small customer care team, specifically, captured the details of nearly 500 calls in less than 10 days.
This information helped us:
- Identify the core services people need
- Identify pain points with finding information online
- Opportunities to gain operational efficiencies
The Team
Researcher & Coordinator: Laura Cochran
Product Designer: Adam Moorman
Content Strategist: Andrew Hearst
Engagement Manager: Lara Kohl
Product Strategist: Sonja Marziano
View More Case Studies
More than 15 Years of Experience
Over my 15+ year career I've worn many hats. The case studies in my portfolio thread the needle across my experience as a research and design practitioner and people leader.