Design Thinking Accelerates IT Modernization and Improves the Customer Experience
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) used human-centered design to improve children's access to healthy school lunches. Through Design Thinking techniques, the USDA was able to identify common errors made by families applying for the National School Lunch Program. USDA prototyped solutions and tested them among applicants to find one that remediated common errors. Now, the USDA reasons that the application error rate is less than 10 percent! Design Thinking enables the Government to better understand its stakeholder challenges through definition, prioritization, interviewing, and prototyping. This approach helps make meaningful observations about stakeholders.
User Personas and Journey Maps uniquely allow Government agencies to consider the broad stakeholder ecosystem and understand all of the ways customers interact with their agency. These tools allow the Government to step into the shoes of their stakeholders and gain a better understanding of what it is like interfacing with a Government system from an outside perspective. These tools provide insights into IT modernization efforts, and answer questions, such as: What are our stakeholders looking for? How can we meet their needs? What part of our current system works best and what can we
improve? If we improve a specific area, how will that effect the experience for multiple different stakeholders?
Starting with the ecosystem, then delving into an understanding of how the customer can interact with an agency at every channel (e.g., in person, through the web, through social media, etc.) helps focus IT Modernization on successfully meeting its goals for improving CX.
About Arc Aspicio
Arc Aspicio enhances the future of our nation by creating bold ideas and bringing them to life. A consulting and solutions company, Arc Aspicio solves problems by applying our integrated capabilities in strategy, design, data, human capital, behavioral science, and technology. The company passionately pursues our vision to be the hub of creativity where people take action to change the world. To do this, employees collaborate with clients and partners to create solutions using a human-centered approach. Innovation is not possible without action. The company focuses on strategy first, then takes a hands-on approach implementing ideas to achieve results. Join Arc Aspicio and our Strategy Innovation Lab (SILab) by creating and sharing ideas to inspire people to change the world. Follow us on Twitter @ArcAspicio @SILabDC and learn more at www.arcaspicio.com.
More and more, Information Technology (IT) modernization programs are improving customer experience for those who interact with agencies. The modernization process identifies new technology that can replace legacy systems or promote electronic processes over paper-based ones or outdated ones. A taxpayer’s experience in filing tax returns or a potential senior seeking public housing are just two examples of where modernization makes a difference for citizens.
Design Thinking uses human-centered principles, techniques, and tools to generate an extensive understanding of customers and stakeholders and their challenges. Design Thinking also helps us understand the goals, challenges, and constraints that Federal Government organizations face. Key Design Thinking tools allow Federal agencies to develop insights that inform and aid IT modernization efforts. For example, user Personas and Journey Maps aid this process in the Federal Government. User Personas are fictional representations of a customer that include the customer’s attitude, skills, goals, and concerns. Personas provide a better understanding of a customer’s needs and anticipated behaviors. Journey Maps are diagrams displaying the stages a customer experiences when interacting with a company, organization, department, or agency. Journey Mapping highlights the gaps or shortcomings in providing customer experience.
Applying Design Thinking to modernize IT for the Government must account for the unique expectation’s citizens have of the Government. It also must consider the broader needs of stakeholders beyond the end user. Arc Aspicio has adapted Design Thinking best practices to the Federal environment through the iterative five-phases of our design process – empathize, frame, explore, experiment, and implementation. We incorporate traditional and Government-specific Design Thinking tools, such as Stakeholder Analysis, Mind Mapping, and Mission Needs Analysis, which identifies the specific Government mission areas to accommodate the best approach for all stakeholders.
