--- id: "workshop:ux-in-government-how-to-hire-build-skills-and-grow-capacity" type: "InnovateUS workshop" title: "UX in Government: How to Hire, Build Skills, and Grow Capacity" url: "https://innovate-us.org/ux-in-government-how-to-hire-build-skills-and-grow-capacity" date: "2025-08-21" duration: "90 minutes" language: "English" instructors: ["Cindy Phan","Keith Wilson","Lisa Carter","Erick Pfleiderer","Paul Gehrig","Mallory Chacon"] recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTl5HPjZrrU" transcript: "automatic, from the recording" source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)" licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org" --- # UX in Government: How to Hire, Build Skills, and Grow Capacity InnovateUS workshop · 21 August 2025 · 90 minutes User Experience (UX) practices can help governments design services that are easier to use, more inclusive, and better aligned with what people actually need. This 90-minute virtual event will focus on how government teams can grow their UX capacity, bring UX into their everyday work, and attract qualified UX professionals to public service roles. It’s designed for government staff interested in building internal UX capability, individuals exploring UX careers in government, and anyone who wants to learn more about how UX can support better outcomes. The event will start with a 60 minute panel featuring UX professionals who work in and with government agencies. Panelists will share practical insights, examples, and answer audience questions about what it takes to do UX work in this space. After the panel, attendees will join one of two 30 minute breakout sessions. One will focus on implementing UX practices within government teams. The other will cover strategies for hiring and supporting UX talent. Both are intended to give participants concrete ideas they can take back to their work. ## Learning goals - Learn how government teams can grow their UX capacity - Understand how to bring UX into your everyday work -  Learn best practices for attracting qualified UX professionals to public service roles ## Speakers - **Cindy Phan**, UX Engagement Lead, U.S. Digital Response - **Keith Wilson**, Talent Engagement Manager, US Digital Response - **Lisa Carter**, Senior Product Designer, Esri - **Erick Pfleiderer**, Design Director, Digital Experience, Sirius XM - **Paul Gehrig**, Lead Product Designer, unBail Labs - **Mallory Chacon**, Research Lead, Staff Researcher, SiriusXM Auto Research Lead Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTl5HPjZrrU ## Transcript Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/ux-in-government-how-to-hire-build-skills-and-grow-capacity.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/ux-in-government-how-to-hire-build-skills-and-grow-capacity.json (every segment with its start and end second). **Keith Wilson** [0:00](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=0) Thank you for the introduction, Jess, and just really excited to have everybody here. It looks like a good group today, and we're lucky to have such a wonderful panel that we'll talk a little bit about. This session today, as Jess mentioned, is about UX in government. We're going to talk about practices of UX, how to build capacity within your organization, and some ways that you can attract UX talent to your organization. Just a little bit about U.S. Digital Response, that's the organization that I work at, and my colleague Cindy as well. We have a team of about 34 people working on a variety of different areas. We cover election support, we do AI, we do language access, procurement, talent, user research, a wide range of things. For the most part, it's of no cost to governments, so we partner with governments to be able to provide support and build digital capacity. [1:01](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=61) We're always really excited to work with different governments and help out however we can. We have a network of about 500 different cities and states and counties that we've worked with. We have a hand-raiser pool of over 11,000. Those are folks, just like the panel that we'll be talking about here, that are usually mid or senior in their career, industry expert folks, that we bring on to these engagements and craft a team that is able to work with your government and provide the support that you need. We have about 30 or so active projects going on right now. For me, I'm Keith Wilson, I'm our Talent Engagement Manager here at U.S. Digital Response. So I work with governments to help them build out their hiring capabilities. Sometimes we look at organizational design, talent development, different things like that. And then my colleague, Cindy, who is also going to be one of the facilitators of this meeting, she leads our UX work, so working with governments to help them with UX projects and building their UX capacity internally. [2:14](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=134) And this is our contact information, so feel free to reach out if there's anything you'd like to discuss. Great. So just a quick overview of the agenda here. We're going to start off just kind of talking about, like, what is UX, user experience, for those that may not know that abbreviation there. How it sort of works within government and why it's such a valuable tool and resource within government. We're going to talk a little bit about, again, hiring and sort of attracting UX talent. How to sort of build out practices within your government, if that's something that's new or you're starting to kind of ramp up. Then we're going to have some time for an AMA session. You'll be able to put your questions in the chat, and the panel that we'll introduce here in a second will be able to answer your questions for you. And then we have a breakout session in sort of the last 30 or so minutes of the event here. That will be the – our experts here are actually kind of showing a government website and talking about, you know, the things that it's doing really well and how you can improve the UX experience for that particular site. [3:25](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=205) So everyone will get a chance to choose which site. We'll have two sessions, and you'll get to choose which site you kind of want to take a look at. And then, yeah, then we'll circle back around for a closeout there. Great. In terms of our wonderful panel here, again, just really excited to have this group here. We have Paul, Eric, Lisa, and Mallory. They've all been – you can – I won't read their whole bios here. You can see it up on the screen, but they all have a wealth of experience out in the industry and have also worked on a variety of engagements as expert volunteers with U.S. Digital Response, working directly with government partners. Great. **Cindy Phan** [4:11](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=251) Great. **Keith Wilson** [4:13](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=253) Yep. Yep. Now I'll pass it over to my colleague, Cindy. **Cindy Phan** [4:16](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=256) Thanks, Keith. I'm excited to be here with all of you. And as a little bit of a warm-up, you know, in your last couple weeks or months, what is a website or digital service that you've used that you've really liked how it operates? Feel free to share in the chat and a reason why in the chat. This is just to get us – you know, our brains warmed up to think about UX. Cool. As you've been thinking about, you know, a website or service that you use, you know, whether it's, like, Google or, you know, a government website or Airbnb or kind of whatever you use in your daily life. Keith can go to the next slide. Yeah, the reason why I've asked you to do that is just, you know, if you ever think about, you know, your experience when you use a website or a service, you're applying a UX mindset. [5:16](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=316) You know, you're thinking about what works well, what doesn't work well, was I able to do what I wanted? Did I just get lost and confused and decide to walk away from the site and deal with it later? That's all in the service of user experience. And so what is UX? It's a word that we all hear, acronym we all hear, but what is it really? And so, you know, have you ever struggled to find an item in a grocery store, rode your bike in a bike lane, or had to sign up for a subscription to watch a show? All of this is tied around user experience. You know, we as people are trying to do something and how have the systems and processes around that thing we're trying to do or the object we're trying to buy kind of shaped our experience in interacting and trying to do this thing. You know, does your city have a dedicated bike lane or are you just riding in the street? That's the city thinking about, you know, how do we build a good user experience for bike riders? [6:20](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=380) If you're in a grocery store, you're trying to find that can of tomatoes, you know, is it easy for you to find, do the signs on top of the aisles tell you where to go? Or do you kind of have to guess and walk through three aisles until you find what you need? And so user experience is about the relationship between a person and a product, service, or company they're trying to interact with. And it encompasses everything from your perception, your emotions, your interactions. Can you do what you want? Is it easy? Is it clear? Do you leave feeling confused? And so that whole, you know, experience is what we call user experience. And so I'm going to pass it over to Eric to talk about what a bad UX is. **Erick Pfleiderer** [7:08](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=428) Thanks. So I like to try and explain this through something a bit more relatable because bad UX can be a bit broad. So imagine coming across these products. You know, boots are meant to keep your feet dry, but these don't really help people achieve that result. A broom that you need to lay on the floor to use, probably not so easy to use. Salt and pepper shakers maybe that come out at different rates. You'll notice that salt shaker only has one hole and the pepper shaker has three. Probably wouldn't meet someone's expectations for how they work. So none of them really provide a good user experience. And you can evaluate your organization's experiences through a very similar lens, whether that's for a digital experience on a website or app or even for a face-to-face service that your organization provides. Ultimately, you know, you can ask, do they help someone achieve a goal or complete a task? Are they easy for everyone to use and do they meet user expectations? So let's talk a bit about what makes a good user experience. So these characteristics can really help codify what comprises a good user experience. [8:12](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=492) But in kind of simpler terms, I would say good UX helps people complete a task easily and efficiently. It's something that people want to use because it helps them solve a problem. It can inspire trust and confidence in users through professionalism, transparency and reliability. It's accessible to all. It's useful. It's consistent. And ultimately provides value to both a user as well as the organization. **Cindy Phan** [8:42](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=522) So the first question we have for this amazing group of panelists who have a lot of experience doing UX work in different industries. What does UX mean to you? And I'm going to first call on Mallory. **Mallory Chacon** [8:57](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=537) Thank you, Cindy. So hello, everybody. I'm Mallory. So UX to me, I think I think this question is a little twofold. I think firstly, UX is very simply really the experience that I have with a product or a website or a feature. So that could be a chair. That could be Airbnb's website, which is one of my favorite examples for good user experience for everyone in the chat. And then I think as far as like a good UX goes, I really define that as a product or a feature that both fits into my life. So it has value, speaking back to kind of what Eric mentioned earlier. But also it has a good user experience that I don't necessarily notice. It helps me accomplish my goal without me realizing kind of the gears that are working in the background to to make it happen. **Cindy Phan** [9:52](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=592) Great. Thanks, Mallory. Paul, do you want to go next? **Paul Gehrig** [9:55](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=595) Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Paul. To me, UX, you know, it's really easy to focus on UX from a digital perspective. I think Mallory touched on this. It's not just digital things that you encounter, not just a website or an app. It's all those experiences, like Cindy mentioned, that you're going through your day to day life. And it's. Both the action that you're trying to achieve or the outcome you're trying to achieve, and also the feeling that you have as you're doing that, you're trying to not only UX is not only delivering on helping a user complete the goal or complete the task. It's also how do they feel after they've done it and while they're doing it? Does it do they leave feeling satisfied and supported? So those are the things I think about. Great. Thanks, Paul. Lisa. **Lisa Carter** [10:56](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=656) Thanks, Cindy. Hi, guys, I'm Lisa. I would say UX, not to immediately repeat what my other two panelists just said, is something that feels invisible, but it's meaningful when it's done well. One example of UX that I really love is not the most recent season, but the season or a couple of seasons back of the bear. There was an episode called Forks, and this episode is actually being taught in UX programs across different schools because of how effective of a metaphor it is. But no spoilers. This character goes to a very high class restaurant and they are basically put through the ringer about all the behind the scenes that are involved in order to create this seamless, incredible experience for the users up front. And I think UX, it means going to that added level of detail and thinking about all those steps from the user's perspective so that they don't have to worry about a thing. They could just show up and eat. And I think that goes beyond dining experiences. It goes to digital websites, it goes to mobile apps, and it goes to service design. **Cindy Phan** [12:01](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=721) Great. Thanks, Lisa. And that episode of the bear is great. If nobody has watched it yet, I would highly recommend. Last but not least is Eric. **Erick Pfleiderer** [12:10](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=730) So I don't repeat the information I said in the slides. I do use a little bit more relatable things. Breaking it down still, though, into good and bad. A good user experience can bring a smile to someone's face. It's something that after they engage with it, can say to themselves, wow, that was easy, or maybe even better, the experience was so good that they told somebody else about it. Whereas a bad user experience might lead to someone making a phone call or writing an email or posting something negative online about their experience. All of which, of course, can be detrimental to an organization's reputation, their efficiency, or maybe even their bottom line and their operational costs as a result. **Cindy Phan** [12:54](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=774) Great. Thanks, Eric. And thanks to all the panelists. In all their answers, they really highlighted how UX is very broad. Anytime anybody interacts with a thing, your interaction is the user experience. And that could be in a public setting, you trying to get a government benefit. But also, I want to highlight user experience can be tied to how an organization works internally. So I've done a lot of UX projects and a lot of these panels as well, where you have a project that's focused on what is the staff experience? If you have a customer service office, what is the experience of staff when they're trying to support the public? And there are multiple layers to think about user experience. And you not only want the experience to be great for the end user who's getting the benefit, but also for the staff and various other folks who are engaging and making sure that that service works out. And so there's kind of different layers in which you can think about user experience. [13:56](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=836) So why UX and government? You know, having worked in government space for a decade myself, oftentimes I hear that UX is an afterthought, it's a nice to have, and it's something that like all the big, fancy, you know, private companies can do because they have the money. But the reason that we wanted to have this workshop is to really distill that UX is valuable no matter where you work or what you do. You know, as our panelists mentioned, you know, it works in the digital space, in the public space, and in how you interact with the physical world. And one, you know, in making the case for why UX is valuable in the government space, especially for those of you who are trying to, you know, convince your staff, your bosses that we should be investing in UX, UX provides a really great and deep insight into the pain points and opportunities of growth that in how either your team operates or how you can better serve your users in the community. [15:00](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=900) You know, as an individual, you have a very specific and focused lens on what experience is, but by taking a user experience lens, you can kind of get a broader view of what is experience overall for the majority of people and understand, you know, what are the pain points and opportunities for growth you can invest in. This also helps you to build an understanding of what solutions can have the most impact in the long term, short term, and a sense of the level of effort. You know, as we all experience, there's an infinite amount of things that we can do and we can improve, and it's really hard to figure out, like, what should we actually prioritize? We have X amount of time, X amount of resources, and we're trying to hit certain goals for the organization and for the public. And so, applying a UX mindset gives you a lot of insight into, like, of those pain points, which are the biggest pain points and which solutions can have an impact in the short term versus the long term and can help you kind of prioritize and think about your work. And which leads into, you know, helping you make better decisions about how you prioritize your work, how you resource different things, and start thinking more holistically about what your long-term strategy is for how you, you know, better serve the public or how you better operate internally. And this also creates a great opportunity for you to strengthen your relationships and build with your users and community so that it's not just, you know, internally we decided to build a thing and now we're just tossing it over the fence and hoping it works. Instead, you're bringing them in into your space, letting them think, sharing their opinions, and kind of co-collaborating, co-designing together to build a solution that actually meets the needs of the community and addresses those pain points that you've identified. [16:48](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1008) And so I'm going to pass it to Lisa to talk through what a good UX in government example is. **Lisa Carter** [16:54](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1014) Thanks, Cindy. Yeah, so for this example, fortunately, it's across the pond, so not US-based, but this was done by the UK, their primary website, gov.uk, which connects to all of their different government services in one place. I called this out as a good example, one, because it actually won a design award, beating out a couple other different competitors in the UK, so it's pretty legit. And the other pieces about the design of the website itself, I wanted to call out that this page works because it's simple. It gives people access to the services that they need and through different ways, either like a search box, which is universal, or you provide these quick links to popular pages on gov.uk, and perhaps those links change over the course of the year. Maybe if it's tax season, you have quick links to filling out your taxes, things like that, all in the spirit of anticipating users' needs without them having to figure it out for themselves. And then at the bottom, there's also this clear map of available services that you can look at across the entire gov.uk umbrella. And I just think this is a really great, simple website. It's super accessible. They've done the work in terms of making sure everything's in an easy-to-read, plain-text, user-friendly manner. So we could definitely learn a lot from how they run this website. Thanks, Lisa. And yeah, and just to add, **Cindy Phan** [18:21](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1101) I think we've all seen the government websites where the homepage is just a lot of information about the department and who's the office behind it. But a good government website, if you are thinking about how you better serve the users, you want to think about what are people actually trying to do when they go to gov.uk? Are they trying to learn about how the UK government works? Are they trying to learn about different benefits and services available through the UK government? And so they've done a great job of framing their entire website around what do people actually need when they're coming to this website? Is it information or is it about getting access to services and information about those specific services? And so the next question we have for our panel is for them to share a UX project that they've done with a government agency, whether that's in their day-to-day jobs or as a volunteer at USDR. And so I'm going to first call on Eric. Thanks, Cindy. Prior to my time at SiriusXM, **Erick Pfleiderer** [19:27](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1167) I worked at various agencies here in the DC area, and I led the redesign of the Federal Communications Commission website, the FCC. And I think one of the biggest challenges that they faced is just the broad audiences that they had to serve. Internal users who've used the site multiple times per day to external customers or people who might be visiting the site to report a problem for the first time ever. And so a problem like that was incredibly difficult. We spent a good amount of time doing stakeholder interviews with internal stakeholders and usability testing with external users and internal users really as well to understand the problems that they were facing, what their navigational patterns were like. We did all sorts of different activities like card sorting and tree testing to reorganize all of their content and make sure that things were easy to find, whether that was through navigational patterns or like we organized their nav into audience-based navigation, which seemed to solve a lot of problems too. As Lisa mentioned, with the gov.uk site, elevating some of the quick tasks right to the homepage so that people didn't have to search too far to find them. And ultimately, I'm just proud that even though it's been 10 years, the site is almost as it was then, which I think is a bit of a testament to the good structure that **Cindy Phan** [20:56](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1256) we put in place. Great. Thanks, Eric. I will call on Paul next. **Paul Gehrig** [21:03](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1263) Thanks, India. Example I'll give is actually a USDR project that I worked on with the city of Seattle. The problem that was identified was folks at the Office of Economic Development didn't really have a good idea of the procurement contracting process. Everyone seemed to have a different idea of how it worked and what the various steps were across the various roles. So our goal was to essentially visualize and help clarify that process. So we did some research and started talking with people across the team and started to realize that the problem wasn't really clarity. It was working norms. People had their own way of working. There was a lot of turnover, which made it really difficult to understand where things passed off between the different roles. So instead of solving the intended problem, we found a deeper and more structural problem. [22:13](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1333) And we're able to help build a simple Google Doc that helped different members of the team collaborate on different parts of the process that seem to overlap and where there is a lot **Cindy Phan** [22:26](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1346) of miscommunications. So, yeah. Great. Thanks, Paul. And I think that's a great example of, you know, you walk into a situation and you think you understand the problem and how to fix it, but by taking the time to just talk with some folks, you start to understand there's a deeper core problem that if you resolve that will kind of trickle down and fix a lot of the other issues that you see. So I think that's a great example of why taking the time to talk with stakeholders or users is valuable to make sure you're addressing the actual core problem. All right. Next, I'll call on Lisa to share an example. Yeah. So at the beginning of this year, which **Lisa Carter** [23:09](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1389) feels like forever ago, I worked on a USDR project with the city of Pasadena around when the LA wildfires was happening. This project focused on helping the city of Pasadena figure out what information to put on their website to help wildfire affected people get the information that they needed. And this was a rapidly evolving situation. When we were brought into the project, the wildfires were still not actively contained and things were rapidly changing every single day. And while this engagement was probably one of the fastest USDR engagements we've done, it was like three weeks start to finish. Ultimately what we did, we brought in a content strategist, we brought in an emergency communications expert, and myself as a user researcher slash designer. And what we were able to do is evaluate how other disaster websites share their information. We interviewed different wildfire survivors and asked them what information they needed when and what was most helpful to them. Because in that situation, you were just completely overwhelmed with information from so many different sources. You just want to go to one website that sort of has everything that you need in a timely manner. And what we were able to do was provide recommendations for a website redesign that helped give people information that changes over time. So if the water restrictions are lifted, it'll communicate that on the website. If you're at the point where you're starting to rebuild, it'll link you to stuff for contacting housing permits, things of that nature. So we were able to propose this website redesign to them, they were able to implement it, and the website is live now. So we went and were able to start to finish, create, and flesh out a UI redesign in about a month and really deliver information to the people that need it most. And I think our case study is actually live on our website, so I'll drop a link to it if anybody's interested in reading more about that. Thanks, Lisa. And you know, I think **Cindy Phan** [25:07](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1507) that's a great example of, you know, a lot of times when I'm talking with folks about, you know, how they can employ UX in their work, the assumption is that, you know, UX projects have to be six months, a year, multiple years. And really, I think Lisa's example shows that UX can be very responsive. You can literally have a disaster happening. And you can, you know, if you take the time to talk with the people who are immediately affected, you can think about what are some quick, short-term things that you can do to really help people in that moment. And the fact that, you know, Lisa, along with Pasadena, was able to get something, get so many insights and get something up so quickly shows that, like, UX can be responsive to the needs. And you don't need to commit a long time to do a UX project. You can do something, you know, quick and dirty in a month if you need to, or you can take more time if you need it. It's really just thinking about what are your needs and what are the needs of the people you're trying to serve. And with that, last but not least, is Mallory. **Mallory Chacon** [26:11](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1571) Beautiful. Sorry, I lost my mouse for a second. I have a couple of different screens. I'll share an example from a USDR project as well, where I was working with a major U.S. city to improve their housing lottery system. And the big thing that I took away from this is, as someone who mainly has their experience in non-government agencies, something that really stood out to me was we really made sure to look at both the people who were managing the lotteries as well as the people who needed to use the lotteries to get housing, to make sure how can we balance out this experience so that really both primary users here are satisfied with the tools that they have. And similar to, I think, it might have been Paul that mentioned this, the problem was a little deeper than just why weren't people going to these lottery maintenance sheets. [27:14](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1634) And more or less was around managing the lotteries and getting everything up on these sheets was really cumbersome. And part of the reason for that was there was a lot of redundancies that were happening. And users who were applying for the lotteries often were just applying to try and get into something. They're at a very critical point in their life where they really need to get into housing so that they have a roof over their head. And the stress of just applying to the many different lotteries as well as going and trying to manage and check where they are in this lottery system was very overwhelming and all felt like the term implies, like a lottery that feels impossible to win. And so the bigger takeaway there is how do we make this more of a manageable process so that people don't feel like it's impossible and people can get access to the resources that are being provided to them and really kind of create a clear bridge between the two parties, the people who are managing and the people **Cindy Phan** [28:18](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1698) who are using the software. Thanks, Mallory. And yeah, I think that's a great example of working in the government space. Often people are coming to look at benefits or services or whatever in a moment of they're stressed out. They're trying to make sure they can survive, their family can survive, which is a very different context from if you think about like Airbnb or other services where it's like people are coming to plan for a joyous thing versus government benefits. Sometimes you are meeting people at the most stressed out moments in their lives and applying a UX mindset to your work really makes space for the reality that people are stressed out and they are trying to achieve something to make their lives stable and make their lives or their families stable. And UX is a great way to pause and make sure you're listening to folks and building a lot of empathy as you build out your services or your benefits programs or whatever it is to make sure you're meeting folks where they're at. [29:19](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1759) And so thanks to this great group of panelists who've invested so much of their time and their expertise in supporting different government agencies, we've really seen kind of a lot of impact that these volunteers as well as other volunteers have had on government agencies and applying a more UX and empathetic mindset to the work that they were doing. And next I'll pass it to Keith to talk about hiring UX talent. **Keith Wilson** [29:48](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1788) All right. So yeah, we're gonna shift just a little bit and talk about how to bring in awesome folks into your organization. We wanted to... I'm going to kind of break it down a little bit about what does it actually mean to hire for a UX role and kind of how to approach that. You know, I think in these presenters so far, you've heard about user experience research, you've heard about user experience design. There's all these sort of kind of nuanced roles in there. Sometimes they have overlaps, sometimes they're really clearly defined. But I think the important first step here is making sure that you understand what you need for your particular organization and the work that you're trying to do. So making sure that you understand, you know, is this need to be a designer? Does this need to be a researcher? Does it need to be that kind of combined skill set there? Also just kind of finding alignment between, as I said, the team and the job description, what you're trying to hire for. [30:52](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1852) You know, in the work that I do with governments, we want to make sure that the government understands what talent they need so that whenever they bring somebody in, they're setting that person up for success. And having that alignment between the needs and the role itself is so important. Also just hiring for the right level. Sometimes you need somebody that's going to be, you know, really hands on in the work. Sometimes it needs to be somebody that's more in the, you know, strategic conversations. A lot of this has to do around making big organizational changes and, you know, changing a government website or a government process can be a big undertaking. So making sure that you have the right experience level to be able to be successful in that role. And then talking about sort of the evaluation criteria itself, making sure that you're finding that right balance, you know, that you're not sort of going too far one side with design or sort of UX thinking or research or whatever. [31:54](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1914) Making sure that you're finding folks that probably have a well-rounded understanding of the space because especially in the government world, you're probably not going to be able to have a, you know, 20 or 30 person UX team that you're able to have all these sort of individual roles in that. One is also share. I know that that's a lot to intake there. And if you've never hired for UX roles, that can be pretty intimidating. But one of the resources that we're going to share, we'll have some information later in the presentation that will be available sent to you afterwards if you're interested, is a pretty thorough hiring guide for UX roles. Variety of different levels for UX research and UX design, job descriptions, interview processes, interview questions, how to actually kind of understand the skill sets that you need for your organization. We have resources for that. So it's a pretty comprehensive guide if you've never hired for UX before or if you're just trying to build up that team or skills within your organization, we have resources to come if folks are interested in that. [33:07](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=1987) So, you know, opening up to the panel here, what advice would you give to organizations looking to attract and UX to retain UX or UX design, UX research talent? And let's go, we'll go Mallory. **Mallory Chacon** [33:26](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2006) I think the biggest piece of advice, as I was thinking about this question earlier, is to really lead with a UX mindset, even before you hire or aim to retain this talent. And if we kind of break down what that means, because I know that's kind of a heavy loaded statement. I think I would advise people to really think about centering their user at the center of their decisions and their design, and then continue to re-center the user as your product kind of evolves alongside of the people that use it. How do you constantly bring your user back into the conversation and make sure that you're making decisions that are centered around them and that really solve for their needs. Some common questions that I often ask when I'm first starting to look at something or I'm starting to think about even a feature in my day job is really what do our users think about this and how would they use it and can they use it to accomplish their primary goal. [34:30](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2070) And if you don't have the people who can help you answer those questions confidently, I think that's where you start to look at getting either UX designers, UX thinkers, UXRs, to help answer those and make sure that you keep your users at the center of your entire process. **Keith Wilson** [34:51](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2091) Great. How about you, Paul, what do you what do you look for when, what do you think a government should look for you're kind of looking forward if they're attracting or retaining UX talent. **Paul Gehrig** [34:59](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2099) Yeah, yeah, especially getting started it's kind of daunting because not only are you trying to figure out like, what is the scope of this thing and what can it do but like how do you support someone in that work. I think it starts with having the right people around them like having champions that like care about like user centered thinking and are willing to support this person in their explorations, whether that's, you know, getting them in front of the right people, communicating the value of what they're doing to other stakeholders, whether they're, you know, people who are involved in various ways that the problem that you're trying to understand. Or those that have decision making power, buying power to unlock things it's really important to have everyone around this person or this small group of people that you start with to be empowered and feel like everyone is behind them because it can be hard when you go in unsupported and you don't really have that you're both trying to like solve the problem from a user experience perspective and advocate for why. [36:10](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2170) You should be there. So I think what you can do is, is set that environment so that when someone comes in, they have, they can focus on solving the problem or encountering uncovering the user needs. **Keith Wilson** [36:27](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2187) Great. I mean, we have all these wonderful attendees at this event here, you know, now you're all champions, hopefully for UX and can take that back to your organization. And I know that that means a lot for, to Paul's point, making things happen in government and organizations, having those champions for the spaces is so critical, even if it's not directly your work, just being supportive is always fantastic. Let's go, Eric. **Erick Pfleiderer** [36:57](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2217) Thanks. I think there's a few different aspects of this to me. I think the big one though is that you have designers and researchers are inherently empathetic and inclusive. I think it's one of the things that sort of are our superpowers. And so I would say that ensuring that people know that they're going to be, if you're, if you're in a hiring situation, that they're going to be working in a place where the people there care about the audiences that they serve and that they're invested in their feedback and improving to meet their needs and expectations. And I think that needs to be reflected in your hiring process as well. So it's not just the hiring manager, right, and the recruiter that is maybe taking phone calls and making this decision, but that there are other people on the team that you're going to be engaging with that are included in that process and that are helping to drive that hiring decision. I think it's, it's also important to set expectations properly so that the person can be successful. Is the person really coming in to identify and solve user problems or are you looking for them to truly transform the organization as Keith sort of harkened to earlier? [38:12](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2292) You know, I think that that's just really important to make sure they can, they can thrive. And I think also just imparting a little bit of understanding, you know, and hopefully it's some things that you could walk away from, from this conversation with, but that you understand that UX is more than how it looks, but it's how it works and how it makes people feel. I think just hearing that, you know, will tell someone that they're headed to an organization that, you know, feels like they, you know, they understand. I know sometimes if you're, especially if it's your first hire, for example, sometimes it can kind of feel like you're on an island. And so however, you know, you can help put someone at ease that that's not the case. I think that's, that would be great. **Keith Wilson** [38:58](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2338) Awesome. Thanks, Eric. Over to you, Lisa. **Lisa Carter** [39:01](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2341) Yeah. All great points from my panelists. **Keith Wilson** [39:08](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2348) Oops, sorry. I accidentally muted you instead of myself. My apologies. **Lisa Carter** [39:12](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2352) All good. So I would say to Paul's point about creating an environment that sustains UX, one way that I've seen the flip side of this as a UX team of one in many situations is you don't have to necessarily be a quote unquote UX person to perform the UX work. And if you're there are ways that you could evangelize UX to your stakeholders, like teacher developers about how to use different Figma plugins for accessibility or teach your product managers how to do user research alongside of you. Helping those people buy into your process by actually doing the work alongside of you will prove like the value of your work. And then the other part that I wanted to call out to have a successful UX practice at a business is to not focus strictly on like tactical work like we need to fix the website today and we need to do this now, which is of course very important and should be top of mind. But you should also prioritize the proactive work and that stuff comes with generative user research or like long term strategy, things like that. [40:19](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2419) And that could be overwhelming to think about at the beginning, but that's something that you could grow into as time goes by. And as your practice becomes more mature. **Keith Wilson** [40:31](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2431) Perfect. Thank you all so much. We'll move on to the next section. **Cindy Phan** [40:39](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2439) Great. Um, so yeah, you know, UX Can be a very big thing. And so one of the things that we wanted to talk about in this presentation is like very high level, you know what it means to build a UX practice and Go ahead, Keith. And so our first question for our panelists is You know, one of the big things in building a UX practice or mindset is that you have to convince people that you should be doing it in the first place. As some of you might have experienced when you try to, you know, try to convince your boss that we should, you know, you should Invest in UX, the response might be, we don't have the time, we don't have the resources. There's already so much we need to manage. And so question for the panelists is Can you share a key point you can make to stakeholders when you're trying to get UX buy in and I will call on Mallory first **Mallory Chacon** [41:40](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2500) Yeah. So early on in my career I worked at an agency. And so we spent a lot of time pitching UX research and this was, I think, at a time when UX research also wasn't widely known and wasn't as widely implemented as it is today. And one of the big things that we kept going back to is UX research and really good UX, a good UX practice allows you and enables you to ask the right questions ahead of time. That allows for businesses to de-risk early and ultimately strengthen their decision making process as they're improving, creating new products or or even trying to change something. And so really putting these UX professionals or embedding these UX professionals into your industry and into your practice allow you to make sure that you are maintaining alignment with the people who are ultimately going to use your, your service or your product. [42:47](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2567) And so, yeah, I'll, I'll leave it there. **Cindy Phan** [42:52](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2572) Great. Thanks, Mallory. Eric. **Erick Pfleiderer** [42:56](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2576) I would say you can't afford not to. I mean, I really think that in the short term, it might cost time and money, but in the long term, it kind of pays for itself. You know, as I mentioned before, when people have problems, they are going to look for other ways to solve those problems. And a lot of times that's going to cost you, whether it's actual dollars and cents money or cost you, you know, in reputation management in some way. And so I would say the more that you can focus on the bottom line and real customer feedback and data, the more higher level people in an organization are going to pay attention. So, you know, getting started with that is like keeping track and categorizing user feedback and user feedback doesn't mean it just comes in from a digital experience. It could mean it's the number of people that walk in your front door and ask a question, you know, like how many times are those things being asked and how might you empower those people to self-serve in a digital way that, you know, costs you less time. [44:03](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2643) It costs you less staff time and money to manage those kinds of questions. And so, yeah, like in any way that you can quantify those and the impact, I think, is things that will resonate with stakeholders. **Cindy Phan** [44:18](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2658) Great. Lisa? **Lisa Carter** [44:23](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2663) Yeah, when it comes to like measuring the impact of design, that can be tricky sometimes, especially if you don't have like really amazing analytics data or things like that. But I will say the thing that I found time and time again works when speaking with stakeholders about the value of UX is bringing that raw user research to the table and showing them. It could be a highlight reel of clips of people suffering to get in through your login page. Anything that brings you close to the user and in their shoes as much as possible so you could really empathize with them. It could be quotes. That's been what I found the most useful. Building Shared Stakeholder Empathy **Cindy Phan** [45:05](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2705) Great, thanks Lisa. Paul? **Paul Gehrig** [45:08](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2708) All fabulous points from my fellow panelists. One thing I'll highlight that Eric mentioned, you know, you in your role at your agency, you understand the network of stakeholders and folks and what the motivations are, what the outcomes are. And if a problem is identified, you understand the broad strokes of how it's impacting the various stakeholders. So yeah, framing it as an opportunity to address that problem, framing UX as an opportunity to address that problem and what potential impact it could have. It's just like in a business setting, like it's always a good approach. And I also would say that like, it doesn't have to be this huge investment all at once. You can start small. And there are ways that either, you know, maybe you use a resource like the U.S. Digital Response to like, help understand a specific part of the problem, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. So yeah. **Cindy Phan** [46:31](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2791) Great, thanks Paul. So our next question for our panelists is, if you were going to build a UX team today, where would you start? And that's either, you know, some of our panelists have actually built UX teams or some of our panelists have been, you know, founding first person or first couple of people on a team. So curious from your experience, where would you start? **Erick Pfleiderer** [46:57](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2817) And I'm going to call on Eric first. Thanks, Cindy. Yeah, I've sort of fit into both of those categories, being the first team member and helping to build teams of a dozen or more. And really for that, but those were at agencies. I would say if I was inside of an organization, I think it really comes down to how well is the problem defined? I would guess that though, that most organizations, you know, sort of that was mentioned earlier, might have an idea of what that problem is, but they might not understand truly how deep it goes. And so starting with a researcher to help better define those problems, to ensure that you are spending your time and money in the most effective way so that it immediately can show real problems. And with data behind them to those stakeholders that we mentioned, I think is a really good place to start. **Cindy Phan** [47:57](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2877) Great, thanks, Eric. And Lisa. **Lisa Carter** [48:02](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2882) Yeah, um, I mean, if this is your first time building a UX team for a government application, I would say reach out to USDR and have us do a project for you first for free. But in all seriousness, I think having exposure to somebody in the comments mentioned sponsoring grad student UX interns at the organization. I think doing these sort of lower risk, lightweight, first like trials of UX are a great way to get started just to get people at the company comfortable or team rather comfortable with the idea of UX in their process and figuring out what problems they can work on after the fact. I will plug USDR because we are a lot of seasoned UX veterans here and we can provide a lot of potential perspectives in terms of how to build out your UX organization further. But yeah, I recommend testing it out first, see how it goes and see how it could go **Cindy Phan** [48:58](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2938) further than that. Great, thanks, Lisa. And thanks for the plug of USDR. Mallory. **Mallory Chacon** [49:06](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=2946) Yeah, I plus one to both what Lisa and what Eric said, not to be too repetitive, but I would suggest with starting with top level questions and really trying to understand what is the big user pain point that you're solving for. And if you know that, then I think your next question is, how do you solve for that pain point? And if you already know that, then make sure you are solving for that pain point in the right way. And along each of those questions or embedded into each of those questions, I think are UX practices that you can employ and you can kind of figure out what kind of UX professional you need to hire, whether that's a researcher, a designer or a generalist or another UX professional. And then to that, I put this in the chat, but I think a good place to start to really understand what your experience is and to start building that empathy and starting to build that UX mindset for yourself and for your company is really by dogfooding your own product and going in and saying, you know, if I put myself in my user's shoes, can I accomplish this task? And it starts to allow you to kind of do your own very, very lightweight usability testing, which is a step in the right direction. **Cindy Phan** [50:33](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=3033) Great. Thanks, Mallory. In the interest of time, we'll go to the next section, which is, you know, what you can do next. I think, you know, understandably, it can feel very big and abstract and scary to be like, I want to do UX now. What can I even do? And I think, you know, in the last question, our panelists shared some big, broader things that you can do. But curious to hear from our panelists, what could somebody do today to start a UX mindset? And I **Paul Gehrig** [51:05](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=3065) will call on Paul first. Yeah, I think oftentimes like content changes can be like the lowest lift, but like the most impactful in terms of like, effort and impact. So I think like, reviewing how you talk to your users and how you engage with the folks that your services are helping. And like Mallory mentioned, kind of dogfooding that to say like, if I were in my, you know, if I were my user, like, how would I react to this? How would I go through this? And I think Eric also mentioned just using friends, family members is another great way to just like, get more perspectives. So those are some things that come to mind. And just talk, talk to your users, get as close as possible to the experiences that they're having, and and try and understand where they're coming from. Because it's more than just like, I'm accomplishing this task in this, like, there's other things going on in their life. And there's other things around the experience that are often hard to understand or predict. And when you talk to people, a lot of interesting things come up that you would have never been able to have anticipated otherwise. So. Great. Thanks, Paul. Mallory, **Mallory Chacon** [52:47](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=3167) what would you recommend doing today? Yeah, I would plus one, the dogfooding and really kind of re-broaden that and, and say to look towards really like empathy building exercises or exercises that you can do without doing formal like research interviews. And so some of those things may be like desktop research, looking at what what exists in the world today, there's a lot of really good research out there that can tell you and give you answers, or at least point you in the right direction of understanding how people are perceiving whatever it is that you are trying to build or you're trying to improve. Another place I often tiptoe into cautiously for, for the products that I'm working on is Reddit and seeing what people are saying today. If you can't go out and do interviews, you, you often will have a, a very passionate group of people on Reddit. If they are going there to speak out about your product, they likely care a lot. And it's, it's a pretty good place to, to start to learn. So I would say in summation, dogfooding, empathy exercises, desktop research, and just looking at what people are saying about your product in the wild. **Cindy Phan** [54:09](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=3249) Yeah, that's a great point, Mallory, that, you know, likely there's some information somewhere about how people are interacting with your service, whether that's through, you know, an online forum like Reddit, or even, you know, if you have a customer service team, they are getting a lot of calls from folks about pain points. And that's a great way to start collecting information about like, okay, what can we, what can we do? And so you don't need to start from scratch, see what's out there and available for you to leverage. Great. And so go on to the next slide. As Keith mentioned earlier, we've developed a couple of guides for you all today. If you're interested in digging in deeper, but also if you're interested in just chatting with US Digital Response about how we can support your agency, here's a QR code where you can submit your interest in either our Intro to UX and Government Guide, or our UX Hiring Guide. I also put the link in the chat in case you want to use that as well. **Audience** [55:14](https://youtu.be/MTl5HPjZrrU?t=3314) Great. Well, thank you guys so much for such an interesting panel. * * * Original page: https://innovate-us.org/ux-in-government-how-to-hire-build-skills-and-grow-capacity · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org