Steps Leaders Can Take to Center People

The recent elections and post-2024 election coverage have shown us that people are craving leaders who can make their government deliver. Public policies are too often designed around the institutions that created them, not the people they are meant to serve. The New Practice Lab’s theory of change is deceptively simple: we should design public goods and services the same way we design the most successful private goods and services—in partnership with the people who use them, and suited to the digital age in which we live. 

In my previous role as the first ever lead for Customer Experience for the United States, my team and I faced the overwhelming task of empowering those across the bureaucracy to work differently. We released the first-ever guidance attempting to build this capacity and create accountability in 2018 in the first Trump administration, and knew we needed to start small.

By 2021, President Biden  signed an Executive Order on Customer Experience codifying and elevating these efforts, and we issued a challenge to take specific actions to Deputy Secretaries. In 2024, the American Customer Satisfaction Index showed citizen satisfaction with U.S. federal government services reached the highest level since 2017, even surpassing some private industries. In less than five years, we also got more than half of Federal services reporting reaching greater than 75% trust in the government service provider.

This wasn’t because we were able to commit millions of dollars, hire amazing teams of technology and delivery talent everywhere (although that did help in places!). It was because we worked with passionate civil servants to understand how, from their own perch, they could begin to implement new skills and practices.

For those who haven’t been trained in design methods, it can seem daunting to know where to start on this journey in your own day-to-day hustle in a government at all levels, at a foundation, a non-profit, academic, think tank, or social services organization trying to improve the way public service providers deliver for people. Working differently requires building new muscle. These are a few low-cost, lower-lift actions that can help you start:

Learn how others have listened.

Doing user research is critical, but it’s important we are respectful of people’s time and additive, rather than redundant. Reach out to design-oriented organizations or peruse their websites for case studies and write-ups of previous research efforts, quotes, journey maps, and other artifacts produced through good listening work to understand where gaps may be for your team to fill. Start by talking with these organizations to orient; they may have suggestions on how you can approach learning more about a particular area or population (“customer segment”).

Some places to start: 

• ThePeopleSay.org
• Civilla.org/stories
• Federal Life Experiences journey maps and design phase reports
• Google Scholar for social scientists’ work; the civic tech community can often overlook insights from people who have been studying communities for decades, particularly at public institutions of higher learning

Find your data “treasure troves.”

We often underestimate the value “administrative data” (data collected through your course of business) can provide. Make friends with the folks that run interaction points with the public. These could include contact centers, website analytics, letter sending systems, email inquiry inboxes. In addition to reviewing data, consider engaging at the source by visiting call centers or field offices. Staff working on the front lines of customer service have invaluable insights into the difficulties customers face. Solicit their feedback and make visible changes based on their recommendations. This can be as basic as updating a call center script with a commonly-asked question that experienced representatives receive.

Some questions to ask of your internal data:

• What types of error letters are most commonly sent?
• What are the top reasons for denials?
• What analytics are available on your website(s) about usage?
• What paths are people following most in your IVR system?

Sharpen your own skills to strengthen your questions.

Great leaders know just enough to push and dig in. While you may not be the one designing and doing the research (though we highly recommend at least shadowing a day or two with the team in the field!), being people centered means understanding the work your team is doing, too. Civilla has great free online courses broken up into modules, as does IDEO.org, Innovate-US, and Civic Design Collaborative.

Sit with findings.

Oftentimes, we get briefed and go right into solutioning. Take a moment and ask: what populations are NOT represented in the data you have? What populations are heavily represented and may be skewing the perspective? What are people saying outright, but maybe thinking or doing that contradicts? Why? Consider if another 3-5 interviews could help round out what you’re learning. 

Protect upfront research.

As a leader, empower your team or collaborating organizations to build in a few weeks at the start for “user research.” This should begin with reviewing available administrative data sets (like call center data, application processing data), “Customer segmentation” exercises to understand the different populations (size, demographics, other quantitative descriptors), interviewing people involved in the delivery chain (like case workers, frontline employees, and other experts), and other desk research so the team can most effectively target the higher intensity effort of on-the-ground interviews, focus groups, workshops, intercept interviews, or observations in the field with people served. Understanding the bias and assumptions of each level of the delivery chain (including national policy experts) is important as the teams design interviews with people.

Participate in regular readouts.

Rather than waiting for a final briefing or summary, encourage your design research team to share brief updates weekly or bi-weekly (depending on the project) with your leadership team and others in the organization. This can be “five quotes we heard this week,” a deep dive into one person’s story that they interviewed and feels relevant or representative. This closeness to learnings throughout your typical workflow can keep you connected as you make decisions that may be tangential in other aspects of your day, and also enables you to probe on something that may have come up and seems important from a policy perspective while the research team still has time to go back and learn more.

Factor the cost into the proposal, project plan, budget request.

In the old adage “measure twice and cut once” the value of investing early in good research with people cannot be overstated. In the Federal Life Experience effort, the multi-disciplinary team was able to conduct rich, comprehensive, multi-state/territory/tribal land discovery phases over 6 months for about $500,000. That’s an intensive end (still definitely cheaper than many consulting firms!)—but putting aside a travel budget and two designers part time for a few weeks is worth your effort to ensure a more purposeful and people centered course.

Take a moment to do it.

Block 30 minutes on your calendar once a month for “walking in the shoes” time (even better if you can go visit a field office, volunteer with an organization where you’re directly interacting with the population you seek to serve), but realistically, that’s not always possible. However, in 30 minutes you can: turn off the wifi and data on your phone and pretend that you don’t have access to the internet. How would you find the thing you needed? Pretend that you live in Ohio (or any state!) and need [SNAP / WIC / Medicaid / Job counseling]. See what comes up first in the search result. Click on that link. Go back to the results page and peruse the next few. Call one of the phone numbers you see, and listen to the IVR (recorded menu with options) and pick one—see how long the wait time is, if it’s clear what you need to do. No one is too senior, too busy, to take 30 minutes a month and try to understand what other people are navigating. 

Hire a designer (or two!) from departed Federal talent.

Many designers (service, content, user experience, behavioral, visual, customer experience) who were forced to leave Federal service still want to be involved in mission-focused work; they are searching for opportunities (including part-time contract work) on platforms like Civic Match and Public Sector Jobs Board. Organizations of all types can benefit from this type of capacity in-house.