By Lexi Schilf
A unique partnership based on shared missions
This Spring, Design for America commenced a unique project with the Lab at the United States Office of Personnel Management (Lab at OPM) to conduct a design research study exploring how we could deepen our existing partnership while better supporting both the network of DFA and the hiring needs of the Lab at OPM.
The Lab at OPM mission is to enable and engage public sector employees to transform their programs, processes, and people through human centered design.
With like-minded missions of democratizing design and empowering people using human-centered design, the Lab at OPM and DFA have a shared set of values.
The design research explored the question:
How might we increase diversity in hiring by leveraging the network of the Lab at OPM and the Alumni + Friends Network of Design for America? This project focused on (1) increasing awareness of federal government opportunities and (2) improving success in the hiring pipeline for a more diverse applicant pool.
The process to explore diversity in hiring in the public sector
We kicked-off our project with a study of the landscape and secondary research to ground our understanding of the challenge space and existing initiatives. We learned about existing programs bringing fresh talent into government such as the Presidential Management Fellows, 18F, and Coding it Forward Fellowship. Secondary research gives us foundational knowledge about the project topic and became the basis of our interview guide.
As design researchers, we are not experts in federal hiring but have the skills of curiosity, inquiry, and empathy which allow us to ask the right questions in our research.
During the kickoff and research phase, we interviewed 17 participants from the DFA Network and the Lab at OPM Network. It’s best to learn from many perspectives, so we identified both federal employees as well as city innovators and government consultants to learn about their perspectives, experiences, and perceptions around federal design roles. Our interviews gave us a range of viewpoints as people came from all different fields—from film and design to law and library studies.
We sent out a survey to the Design for America Alumni + Friends network to gather data on the awareness around civic design + innovation roles. We are strong believers that qualitative data and quantitative data are partners in innovation. Qualitative data tells a story and explains nuances while quantitative data can articulate the scale of a challenge.
With the research fresh in our minds, we used MURAL to synthesize our findings, map out journeys, and identify refined challenge statements. We used the journey maps to identify opportunity points in the awareness and job hiring process.
With our digital stickies on unlimited supply, we ideated around refined problem statements and developed a few opportunity areas to present to our partners. Feedback is essential, so we worked closely with our partners at the Lab at OPM throughout the process to check that we were on a feasible path. Mockups are an invaluable way to quickly gather feedback from stakeholders, and we used these to refine our ideas.
Suggestions from the researchers to DFA researchers
Even as experienced design researchers, we can refine our skills with every new design project. During this project, we learned a few important lessons:
Keep your design goals close
Design goals bring a shared mission to a team and help a project stay on track. For this project our design goal was to explore ways to leverage the networks for DFA and the Lab at OPM to increase awareness of federal opportunities and increase success in the hiring pipeline.
In exploratory research projects your design goal could be understanding the journey of your user or identifying stakeholders in a problem space. It’s best to be as specific as possible and include metrics (if possible) to develop tangible goals. We pasted up our design goals on virtual post-its and often referred back to these goals when we were feeling lost in the process.
Consider out-of-scope ideas
One of the incredible values in doing research is identifying opportunity areas for innovation. Especially in client work, it is important to articulate what is in the realm of research. Without a scope, we can experience project “scope creep” and become overwhelmed as a project continues to expand and the challenge becomes unmanageable. We suggest setting the interesting out-of-scope ideas aside and keeping a running list to share with your partner later. Identification of out-of-scope ideas and opportunity areas, could be the start of your next project and are a way to go above and beyond for a client.
Measure your ideas for feasibility
In any organization, feasibility is a cornerstone of project implementation success along with desirability and viability. In nonprofits and government agencies, feasibility is even more important than for-profits as resources are more limited. When working with nonprofits or government agencies, ensure that feasibility is one of your design criteria while evaluating your ideas. As we developed ideas, we communicated what would be feasible in the short-term as well as long-term (out of scope) ideas. During testing, we focused on our short-term ideas as we knew these would be feasible to implement.
Findings and implications for DFA
As this project wraps up, Design for America will apply the learnings to create and improve programs for our Alumni + Friends community. Here is a sneak peak about what we learned and what to expect from our future programs.
New professionals and experienced professionals have very different needs when it comes to job searching and company recruiting.
We learned about the different job searching journeys of new professionals and experienced professionals. New professionals are still learning how to articulate their design skillset regardless of industry and are often still exploring industries. Experienced professionals can clearly articulate how design fits into their methods and know what they want from their next job.
What this means for DFA: As a still young organization, the majority of DFA alumni are still early career professionals. In the next few years, DFA will have the opportunity to create programming for both early and mid-career professionals to meet the needs of the network.
Civic innovation is a developing field with unclear pathways into roles.
We learned that the field of civic innovation has a growing number of roles, but there is not yet a shared language about what to call these opportunities. Words people used to identify their field included: civic design, civic innovation, public interest tech, civic tech, to name a few. What we do know: civic innovation roles align closely with the positive social impact mindset of DFA alumni and would be a good career fit.
What this means for DFA: Partnerships with organizations like the Lab at OPM will continue to grow. DFA will look to assist the network in finding mission-aligned work in government. This summer, DFA will pilot Industry Reviews as part of Days of Summer for alumni to come together through the job search.
There are many motivated mission-driven designers, but limited awareness of job opportunities.
As the field of civic innovation grows, there is still a limited awareness of job opportunities. Through our survey, we know the DFA Alumni + Friends Network has limited knowledge about the field and the roles available in government.
What it means: DFA will be highlighting more federal roles. Be on the lookout for Career Corner in the DFA Alumni +Friends Newsletter!
As DFA continues to grow, we learn with every project about the needs of our network. We build stronger partnerships and continue to build a generation of social innovators across sectors.
If you want to partner with Design for America on a project or learn more about our insights, reach out to info@designforamerica.com.