Evolution of Design and Research in Civic Tech
We’re joined by Senongo Akpem (https://www.linkedin.com/in/senongoakpem/) Vice President of Design and Research at Nava PBC (https://navapbc.com/). Together we talk about shifts in the direction of the design and research practice, innovative practices to build capacity and leadership within it, and its future as new tools like artificial intelligence emerge and become part of it.<br><br>Resources and shoutouts:<br><br> Cross-Cultural Design (Book by Senongo) | https://bookshop.org/p/books/cross-cultural-design-senongo-akpem/7700a228f8e33947<br> Plain Language with Indiana DWD | https://www.in.gov/mph/files/DataDayPresentation-Plain-Language_v3-Comp.pdf<br><br>Music Credit: Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. For this episode, I'm grateful to Nava PBC for their support and partnership. Ship. They were kind enough to go ahead and sponsor this one. So I'm excited both for that collaboration as well as this interesting conversation we have ahead about the design and research field and its future. Sinongo, thank you so much for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?
Yeah. Sure. So I'm Sinongo Akbem. I'm the VP of design at Nava. My job has a lot of different pieces to it, but I think broadly, I'm responsible for leading Nava's design and and research practice. So our design org right now is about a 100 staff, that's made up of designer researchers, content strategist. We have front end designers, communications designers, and, we work across federal, state, and, you know, a bunch of internal projects as well. So a lot of what I do is collaborate at the delivery organization level. So, I'm working with practice leadership, right, product and program, project management, engineering leaders, and, making sure that we're delivering for our clients. There's a bunch of, internal business objectives and execution at the company level that I focus on as well. But I think more tactically, the the work that I'm doing and what I am, you know, focused on currently is just making sure that we're building differentiated building delivery focused teams, teams that are focused on our mission, that are focused on our government clients' mission, and, it's to to make government services simple and effective. So there's a lot of stuff within that. Right? That could be mentoring, senior leadership. It could be helping designers with their growth and development, maybe sometimes even scrubbing into billable work, which is a fun thing in and of itself. So, yeah, I've been fortunate to be able to do a bunch of that stuff over the the years, and, a lot of, what I've been able to focus on is, like, building creative teams, like, building design teams and just delivering for our clients. And because we have so many critical programs and the the the weight of that, that responsibility is is pretty heavy, but, yeah, it's fun. Other than that, I'm the the author of Cross Cultural Design. It's a book that I wrote in 2020, and that's, providing a clear and accessible methodology for designing across cultures. So,
lots of great stuff in there and another kind of personal thing that I'm pretty proud of. What would you say is your personal why? The thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do all those things.
I love the practice of design. Right? The the thing of it, whether it's a capital d or not. There's so many different forms to it. It's just really an interesting topic. Every week, there's some new technique. Right? Maybe somebody on the design team, publishes an article about a way to look at human centered design or something that they delivered. And, yeah, it's all pretty cool. I've been a designer for twenty years now. That doesn't feel real, but it is. And in that time, as you can imagine, like, all sorts of fads, different software, social communities online, different platforms. Like, there's been a bunch of stuff that's come and gone. So the the why for me these days, like, I wanna be able to create more space for other designers to to thrive for them to build their portfolios in the same way that I did when I was younger, ways for them to contribute their ideas and their work and so on. Especially now, I think that the pathways through and into the design industry can be pretty opaque. And so, yeah, just overall wanting to set some conditions for other designers to to navigate their own careers and and be successful, and I create that impactful work. So I guess that's probably why I gravitate towards spaces like Nava, spaces like this, where people do care about designing for the benefit of others. And, because at Nava, we're designing for things like public benefits, you know, critical safety net programs. Like, there's an effect on millions and millions of people in some cases. So in my own little way, right, the why is I wanna help other people navigate those those decisions and and navigate that world and that type of design.
With your family's diverse background and your experience living in multiple countries, you've had a unique exposure to an assortment of cultures and how they interact with each other. How has all of this shaped your worldview?
I'm a third culture kid. I'll explain what that means. My dad is Nigerian. My mother was Dutch American. I grew up in Nigeria, and I had stints back and forth in The US and Michigan and so on. I also lived in Japan for almost eight years, and now I live in Queens. Queens is, I think, one of the most diverse communities in America. There's, you know, a hun almost 200 languages spoken here. So, for me, like, living in between and beside all of these different cultures, that's been completely normal throughout my life, which isn't the same for everyone. Yeah. You were asking before about the why. Like, I'll just talk a little bit about my parents because I think that's an important, you know, facet to this. So my mom, she was the child of migrants, immigrants, and she grew up in an orange farm in Central California. And, she became an anesthesiologist in the the late nineteen fifties, and then she left she moved to Nigeria year of independence. That was 1960. And when she was young, she did stuff like circumnavigate the globe. She went from Nigeria to Ethiopia to Jordan, East Asia, etcetera, and then all the way back to California again. She used to drive around Nigeria on this Yamaha motorbike in the sixties. Look who got pictures of it. And she met my dad working at the Benes Benes Benes leprosy settlement, and, that was where she was working. So they later got married. Right? And that was one of the first interracial marriages in Nigeria at the time. That was, like, the early seventies. And, yeah. So later on at the Benaway leprosy settlement, she started one of the first occupational rehabilitation practices in Nigeria. And later on in her life, she was an artist in Michigan. So a very varied career, probably, reflecting some of the things that I've done as well. And then my dad, for his part, like, he grew up in in Central Nigeria, dusty little village, called Shangev Tiyev. When he was 12, maybe 13 years old, something like that, he ran away from home, which is a whole story that's too long to tell now, but pretty amazing. And he ran away to go to the white missionary school, which was like two days away by foot. He learned English there. Right? He became a pastor, and then he had he got a job at the leprosy settlement. So that's where he met my mom. And after they got married, like, they started a hospital together. They raised me and my sisters in Nigeria. They started an orange farm, which is a little bit poetic because that's where my mom grew up. My dad wrote a bunch of books. He's a mentor to a bunch of generations of pastors in Nigeria, and he was, like, moving back and forth between Nigeria and The US. So I think I get that wanderlust from them. You can kinda hear it in their stories, just getting to live in those different parts of the world. That's a lot of exposure to those, like, shifting cultural, metaphysical spaces. And, Yeah. I'd like to hope that my own design practice and the stuff that I do, it comes from them, and it comes from the the experiences that they raised me in.
Is there anything from that experience that and how that shaped you? Their experiences kind of them being passed into you that you wish you could just sort of, like, magic wand, have more people just sort of innately understand.
I think the idea that it's all relative is a really interesting one. I I don't know how to put that exactly, but being able to view experiences through the lens of the person who's, who's living it, understanding that, you know, cultural perspectives are are not set, but they are quite flexible, and they they really just depend on so many different factors. I went to a friend's house in Ohio once when I was in college, and, they pointed out this huge oak tree in their front yard. And they said when their parents had moved into the house, they had planted that tree. And to me, thinking growing up in one place your entire life in Dayton, Ohio, this is wild. Like, that is a certain cultural experience that I never had any access to. But that is, you know, in in relation to what I experienced, I think a a pretty interesting contrast. So just being mindful of that was something that, that they taught me.
You yourself have a storied and rather interesting career. I think in your answer, you mentioned that you've hit the the two decade mark as wild as that is for, creating meaningful digital experiences. Along that path, you've been a design director, an art director, an author, and now a VP at Nava. What are some things you've learned along that path?
Yes. It has been twenty years. We don't need to remind ourselves that. Right? My my first job was not in design at all. I started my first real full time job as an English teacher. I was a teacher in Japan, and then later on, I was a teacher trainer. I lived in Kyoto, which is a very old, old city, and that was before I ever really imagined that I was gonna become a designer. I didn't really have that in my mind. That job of being a teacher, being a trainer, it taught me a bunch of stuff that I still use today, Clear communication, right, how to think on your feet, how to adapt the things that you need to present or your ideas and your thoughts for different audiences, sometimes simultaneously, and the basics of client services, needing to know how to make your clients happy and what they're interested in, and then also how to train and develop staff who are under you. And that one the last thing in particular, I think that's really important to me. And, you know, what I have tried to focus on as a design leader is what are the ways to cultivate the team around me to, like, build their skills, help them build their portfolio of work. That's always been really important. And maybe another thing, I don't know if it's a learning necessarily, an approach, maybe. For the folks who know me, don't know that I I joke around. I like to have a laugh, tell bad dad jokes and puns and so on. Acknowledging that working in mission driven work can be really heavy. It can be really big impacts and, real just critically important failings in government sometimes that we're helping to mitigate. And there's lots of people depending on, like, the design choices that we make. So it's a pretty heavy burden sometimes. And because of that, I trying to hold things lightly even though they are heavy, not to take my toe myself too seriously as a counterpoint to some of that weight. And, yeah, just generally, like, try and have a laugh laugh at yourself as much as possible. So
As the title of our episode today suggests, we're talking about how the role of design and research in the civic tech space has changed over time. Why is it important for us to acknowledge and talk about that?
Job titles, by and large, are still reflecting functional expertise. For example, we still have, like, UX designers. We still have content strategist, researchers, and so on. A thing that we're seeing now, though, is a lot more, like, strategic system oriented design specialists that are getting embedded throughout this service delivery and the human centered design kind of stack and lifetime of projects. So we have designers who are shaping services, and they're also shaping how government teams function and deliver with each other. The shape of design in the industry is is shifting, right, and it's becoming more embedded. So at the end of the day, our goal has to be to drive better results for the public as as civic tech designers. But then if that's true, design leaders in our space, people like me and my peers, like, we have to start talking about and, like, advocating for some of those shifting roles, those shifting responsibilities with clients. And then also, like I was I was talking about before, before, you have to start developing that in your staff, like, in your teams so that, as the roles shift over time, we have the people that are available to to do that work.
One such shift that I've noted is one from general roles to those that are more specialized. For example, folks focusing on service design, content strategy, or user experience research. How do you see this shift affecting the way teams are put together?
Yeah. This is a great question. That shift in the designer roles that you're describing, I see it moving upwards and outwards with so that move out from functional roles to the more specialized one that we're saying, those broader topic and domain expertise roles. So if you, as you mentioned, like, service design, so we can see and we are seeing a shift from, let's say, like, a focus on the customer journey, to a focus on the entire developer experience. Maybe we're talking about content strategist, and we're moving from guiding maybe the creation or the delivery, the governance, or whatever of useful content to then doing the same thing in, like, highly targeted benefits delivery programs with a lot of policy implications, or maybe it's a UX researcher. So, yes, responding to and developing and designing for user needs and behaviors in, like, a specific delivery context, but then we see them working across much larger domains, like, much larger client spaces, in some cases, multiple client spaces. So, yeah, overall, like, that shifting expectation within design teams, that are things that we're designing for, the experiences, the services are getting a lot more entrenched, more larger, like, more widely developed. So there's also that need, less for general roles, but more for this holistic project knowledge, right, domain expertise in the people that are working on our programs because we wanna make sure that those, teams are, like, focused on human centered, outcomes from the start to the finish. So we need that, that shift to happen.
As we shift to areas with more specialized focus, that could mean more overhead and keeping a team organized with folks kinda consisting of those specializations. How do your terms make sure those roles are properly integrated?
Yeah. Operations is a favorite talk of topic of mine, so I I appreciate this. A big part of keeping all of those teams organized is anticipating needs. So I'll give you an example. About five years ago at Nava, we made design operations, director level role. So the frame that we used at that point was, what are the operations, the processes, the runbooks, the plays, whatever you wanna call them, that we need now so that when our team doubles in size and I think at that point, when we were having this conversation, we were, say, maybe 35, 40 people. When we get to 70, when we get to 90 or whatever, and we're at a 100 now, what are the the things that we need in place so that when we get to that point, everything is already set up and it's running smoothly? So we needed a lot more operational rigor even when we were smaller as we continue to grow and then let those internal changes kind of pay off and and we grow into it. So those design ops leaders at Nava, some of them exist at the director level, others are within our programs themselves. They are responsible for things like just ensuring efficiency in how we're doing research, how the team is growing, or removing blockers so that other designers can focus on the craft of the job and, you know, the the client services. So it's really this, like, layer of internal leadership, like, operational infrastructure, so that we can support design across the whole company. And the hope, of course, is that as, design operations is is integrated strongly, then, again, like, designers can integrate into their own roles. They can focus on stuff that they wanna focus on more effectively.
From what you're describing, we're delving to things that require some strong leadership skills, particularly as folks with these, are spread out across larger multidisciplinary teams, and they find themselves in a place where they have to advocate for, user centered practices, maybe even with with partners. How has Nava invested in design leadership skills and development?
Another topic near and dear, and you're probably hearing that in in some of the things that I'm saying. Our design team and our company, the works complexity just keeps getting, larger and larger. So we do have design leaders who are taking on those new roles and new responsibilities, again, to to make sure that human centered design and, research is at the at the center of all of the things that we do. So in addition to, like, design direction, we have design leaders who are focusing on things like facilitation, strategy, brand strategy, for example, like those organizational connections. They're operating at this intersection between the delivery work that we're doing and then there's also people management, which is another frame as well. So we have a number of internal communities of practice, that folks either lead or participate in, content strategy community of practice or front end community of practice, which help to cultivate, leadership, cultivate development. And then we also have things like Design Salon, which is kind of like our our internal, forum for designers to connect with each other, like, build their skills, sometimes reflect on our work and reflect on our failings and our successes, share inspiration and so on. So, in those, those forums, in those places, that's how we can invest in. That's how we can build teams. Like, we can build, leadership skills. We can develop the the designers that we have.
It sounds like there that you're creating both operational and social systems to kinda create a optimal environment for leadership growth. So that leads me to wonder. So as you've created this delivery environment, how has that shaped strong leaders there?
To tell a a story slash give an example, about five years ago, maybe more now what is time? Nava won a contract to, build out a new paid family medical leave system in Massachusetts. So that system, extremely proud of it, and that has quickly become what we consider to be the gold standard for paid leave systems in The US. As a company, we've talked about that program. We've talked about the successes of it, how we've delivered, benefits to folks in the state, of Massachusetts. But, another frame here is all that program has helped helped to shape some of the specialized designers that we have on the team today. So very clearly, like, this wasn't just a product design job. It wasn't a few wireframes in the design system. The designers on that team, they had to understand stuff like policy that had just recently been written, in the state and signed into into law. They had to do research across ton of different stakeholders. It was, like, inside and outside government, sometimes, research with folks who, you know, English was their second language or not their language at all. Maybe Haitian Creole was the only language that they spoke, which is a interesting research facet. But then they're also doing stuff like using, Lucidchart and other, tools to map out all of the eligibility rules and the workflows. And then that is forcing designers to think like policies analysts, forcing them to think like content strategist when maybe that isn't their title. So, anyway, it was like a success internally, as we got so many people to to deliver on that work. But then from there, we have this large number of designers who have gone on to lead similar work on other programs. Some have become directors. Others have become trusted advisers to to other paid family medical leave clients. So, like we're talking about before, like, that's a shift from that hyperfocus on craft. Like, it isn't just user experience design anymore. It's client management. It's that policy domain expertise. Having those types of delivery environments, like, that's a way that we can we can build these strong leaders.
At a company like Nava, where, really, the core business is around working with others, with other organizations, I imagine you have the additional challenge of bringing those partners along for the journey. How have you and your teams approached educating and advocating around specialized design roles in such partnerships?
It has to be a holistic approach, especially when we're talking about modernizing government services. A thing that we talk a lot about at Nava and I think many will understand is every facet of every level of government is all interconnected. And any of the design, the research, the HCD work that we do has to be there to support all of that so that the whole ecosystem can thrive. So being able to do that means we have to act as trusted partners to our clients and make sure that they're getting what they need. So that often means that, the work that we take on, like, it will have specific design roles already identified, like, in the scope of work or in the RFP, the contracts that we sign. But then within that, there is room for us to make sure that we're staffing designers, or we're staffing content strategist, or or front end designers, who are then comfortable advocating for those good design practices that are gonna support that client ecosystem. So sometimes when it's, about specialized, design roles, we have the ability to advocate for them, to, work when we do have a lot of client trust and work with them to make, like, recommendations about what design roles they might need in the future. What does the road map say, and how might this shift who we're staffing on this project? Or what is also really common as with anything else, like, we have, a set contract, and we have a set budget. And so how can we use our existing team to support them in new ways? Maybe things like, having a designer on the team who can also deliver brand strategy or visual design work to a client who desperately needs that, but that wasn't explicitly part of the work to start with. But we're able to to offer that even if it's not written explicitly into an agreement. So
When you have either individuals or maybe teams going on there, it sounds like you sometimes have that first element where it's like that building trust in order to be able to make that advocacy happen. What advice do you give those folks when they're first starting off and kind of building that that trust and that design skill and advice that they would wanna give?
You wanna meet people where they are. Every designer has had that thing where I got some beautiful thing that they're gonna design. It's gonna be so great. Client is gonna instantly approve this with their rubber stamp, happens because that's not where the client is. We really need to meet them where they are and understand what their context is, understand what their own stakeholders are asking. Sometimes it's not the person that we're working with, but it's their boss. And so being able to understand that, that then allows it frees us to be able to do research. It frees us to be able to ask more questions because we want to meet the client where they are. So, that is a a pretty consistent piece of advice internally at Nava. People will often use that phrase.
And I think as I hear you describe the act of that, it seems like the important bit is about asking the questions rather than kinda having the best idea to present. Am I am I along the right track of where you're going? Yes. That is often it. There are some times in which,
a client will say, you don't have to ask questions anymore because you already know the answers. Give me the answer. That, though, very often comes with the trust that you've built. We've had, client, engagements and interactions where they come to us because they know we've answered similar questions and done similar, solve similar problems for other people. And so that is a great way to kinda leapfrog and you say, oh, we we don't need to do foundational research here, or we don't need to ask those same questions. But you still wanna understand what their own particular context is. And, yeah, you're right. Like, you wanna ask the question first and then and take it from there.
I believe we've used the phrase human centered design a a fair number of times in this conversation, but it's something we've seen succeed and find its way into ever more digital services work. That in itself can bring fresh challenges. Designers can find themselves in varied environments, whether we're talking about data modernization, custom products, platforms, or even third party tools like Salesforce. They can even be hopping into places like software developer experience, which I think is one you mentioned a little while earlier, or, like, big enterprise operations at, like, big firms. Yeah. And I'm sure there's a ton that I'm not thinking of in this moment. How do you see the field being impacted by designers being embedded in more and more of these different types of domains?
Yeah. As you're pointing out, designers are increasingly embedded in these really, really complex spaces. Work like, just to pick something from Nava's portfolio. Right? Like building benefits portals or redesigning eligibility workflows, the claimant experiences, like this sort of thing. Designers are having to operate across multiple domains. Right? It's not just the, the design of the thing. It's the technical side of it. What can we actually physically do with the tools of the Internet? It's like an interesting facet. Visually, can people read it? How do they interact with this thing? Is it clear policy? Like, you name it. Right? Then all of those different domains. So to take some examples at, at Nava within the design team, we have product teams. Right? So they're focused on stuff like, building digital services for the public or for, like, an internal staff. Whatever they're building has to meet both the government agency needs, but then also the end user's expectations, which is well and good. So then Nava has embedded certified Salesforce designers. We know that quite a few government agencies, they're gonna adopt Salesforce for things like case management or, like, their benefits administration. So the designers that we have embedded in those teams, like, they're blending UX principles, then it's that platform expertise. So kinda combining domains, and that in turn then is a more user friendly, and human centered, like, interface, with this standardized enterprise framework, you know, the Salesforce design system or or whatever. So that would be one example. Another is, like, we have platform teams. So this is building the shared platforms for boosting developer, productivity or engineer productivity across, like, a bunch of multiple product teams of kind of this infrastructure layer. One thing that we're particularly proud of at Hava is we have a growing number of developer experience designers. So they're really focused on the internal systems, like the workflows that, are used by engineers. And their primary focus is developers as core users of systems, which isn't a frame, or a domain that people immediately think of when they think of, you know, civic technology or or government services. So the designers are doing things like tooling. Right? They're building out human centered documentation, designing technical environments that support those engineers or support the developers. So, overall, we're seeing that that role shift towards bringing human centered design into more specialized environments. And that then in turn is is leading to, hopefully, better outcomes for the clients that we serve.
I think that's a good segue to talk a bit about, maybe, like, the career itself coming up. And, maybe I'll start with something more general with that, which is how do you feel about the direction things are going with the design field?
A big question. The design field, it's been in flux since way before I started. I took one graphic design class in college, and the teacher at that time taught us how to do typesetting with one of those flat, like, graphite pencils in order to map out where the paragraphs would go on the page, you know, on, like, Vellum or whatever. We don't do that anymore. Thank goodness. It's all Figma. So, another example would be, it's, what, two hundred plus years since the Bauhaus started. And for anybody who doesn't get the reference, I'll just explain quickly. Like, the Bauhaus's core objective was really radical at the time that they were created. They wanted to, this is very lofty, but they wanted to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all arts or something like that. So imagine this kind of, like, utopian meld of stuff like painting, architecture, sculpture, and they wanted to make this, like, single creative expression. So we'll recognize the look and the feel of it in a lot of, design and so on that we have today. Right? The minimalism, the strong grids, like, sensor of type. So there's so much influence from the Bauhaus movement in the design industries till today. That was, like, this cultural movement that happened, and that was also a reaction, the Bauhaus, to all of the destruction, like, the chaos after the first World War. So the design industry has been in flux for much longer than I've been alive, and, like, I'm old enough to have seen the widespread adoption of the Internet. And I remember when responsive web design first hit the scene, and that completely shifted how we did everything. So I talk a little bit about this in my book. The the things that we build for the Internet are these cultural products. So when we make them, they help to mediate our social activities. They mediate our aesthetics, again, in the case of the Bauhaus, the the rules of our society in sometimes pretty strange ways. So I do think, the design field has and will continue to, like, have this role to play in defining, like, what's valuable for our society, and then making sure that people have access to those things. So, yeah, one of the the joys of getting to work at Nava is I get to be a part of helping to mediate those cultural products and, like, using them for good. Just as a quick example, like, we worked with the state of New Jersey to modernize their unemployment insurance systems. So that's where the research and design work, the technology work that we're doing is helping more residents get access to their benefits, which is a culturally and socially mediated, good.
That leads me to a a follow-up and to the level that you're comfortable, speculating. One could assert that we're living in a time of change and chaos, not too dissimilar to for for the generation of World War one. Different, but maybe similar in its, how how how chaotic and and how much change there is. Do you feel out there or foresee a sort of movement like that, do you think, in our in our future in response to the kind of the times we live?
That is such a great question. This is a little bit out of the blue, but I do look at the way that, like, Internet memes, for example, spread and the absurdist nature of some things that are hilarious in their own way, the the brain rot memes, for example, they seem to expose, like, how absurd all of this is, how much sludge there is on the Internet to begin with. So there's something in our, you know, like, design culture, which maybe can reflect all of that. But then I also see, on the other hand, this strong move away from, like, trying to artisanally make everything and, using like, the the fact that there is so much chaos or that there's so many inputs or that you have to configure all of these different APIs to link to this thing. So, therefore, we need standardized design systems. We need USWDS or we need, like, the lightning design system because it's just too many things to think about. So it's almost like we've standardized away many of the boring parts of of design, and instead we wanna focus on other things. So perhaps that's a a reaction to the the chaotic movement that we're in. It's like, I don't wanna make a button anymore. I want it just to be within the design system that I'm using.
Oh, I think that's interesting observation. In a way, the two things you mentioned could be connected in some way. It occurs to me. In a way, like, the meme stuff is maybe about getting rid of some of the the boring stuff in quotes about communicating. Right? It's like, I wanna take communicate this, like, powerful idea I have written or I'm feeling, but and without a ton of effort to write something long. And a design system's kinda maybe a similar thing. I might be trying to connect things that are a little disparate. But
No. I think that's right. The amount of brainpower that it takes to operate in today's society is very high. Many of us have seventeen, eighteen different windows open at the same time. I have two monitors right now. So the technology, the content, right, the all of this context. And so, yeah, our role as designers is in hopefully helping to reshape some of that away and automate some of that complexity away so people don't have to deal with it. And we see that in things like the focus on administrative burden, how to make it easier for people to access benefits. Like, how do we get rid of that noise? But then, yeah, perhaps Internet subcultures kind of relish the noise, and that is part of who they are is how can I make this as noisy and absurd as as possible? So yeah.
One of the maybe the the the the things out there that's causing some of the chaos, depending on who you talk to, is, AI. And, it's certainly something that impacts the design ecosystem. What do you think about that impact of AI on the design ecosystem, and how do you foresee roles emerging from that?
Definitely still early days. I wanna acknowledge that. I am not an expert in this at all, and I can speak specifically from the design ecosystem perspective. But design, capital d Design, has, I think, always been most powerful when people lead designers and others, like, lead with strategy and lead with narrative. And we are at our best. We're great systems thinkers. We're great storytellers. And AI is just like many other tools. Right? So designers can use it maybe to boost productivity in certain areas. They wanna use it as a way to process information, or maybe we generate new information based on patterns that we decide on. So I think that's a real immediate impact I see in my team. And then in the industry generally is it's still early days, but I still look to designers' ability to lead with, like, a human centered strategy, with human narratives about the work that we're doing. That is a superpower that I don't think is gonna disappear anytime soon. Like, that will not get automated away, the ability to tell a good story and to to have a real human narrative. It will AI as a tool have an impact on the design industry and our our ecosystem in general. This is inevitable. I know that many leaders at the state and federal level, like, they're working through all of the different policy implications, the contractual implications, staffing implications, when it comes to AI, like, in their own ecosystems and in their, the vendor ecosystems. So just a, like, random example that I saw recently. Nava has a team, or the Nava team was at NASWA, which is the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. So they had a conference recently, and, the state of Indiana was there. They presented, for instance, that they used AI to rewrite something like 700 user facing communications, so stuff like decision notices. And they rewrote it all into plain language using AI in, like, three months versus what they woulda had to do if they did it manually, which was a ten year process. So there is a supercharging. Right? Like, the generating things from preset patterns that we see happening at the client level, which I think is really powerful. And, as a as a company, I think we wanna continue to help our clients work through that. We wanna apply the technology in a, like, a thoughtful, ethical way. So yeah. But definitely still early days.
I love that, Indiana anecdote. It sounds like something that was, you know, pretty easy to to scope out, like, where the where the bounds of it are. Pretty pretty predictable, like, what you're after. And, you have a strong model, like, plain language that goes a thing. You could, you know, use it as input to the model. And I feel like most people aren't really, like, really looking forward to rewriting these sorts of email communications. So it seems like a really valid and good use of that kind of technique.
Yeah. And think about the impact as well on the team. You have a team who's dreading this pile of paper that's sitting in the corner, and it just like, it gets bigger and bigger, and the problem gets larger and larger. And everybody, like, kinda doesn't look at it when you walk in the office every day, but now there's a technology which allows us to quickly get rid of that that pile of paper. Like, it removes the blocker. And now I don't have to wince every time I walk past anymore. Well, now we can use that corner for the new coffee machine or so there's all of these other second order impacts that I think can if you kinda walk through the narrative a little bit, you can see how,
tools like AI can can help to really benefit the teams as well. Like, they have more time with constituents. They have more time things like training and development. For folks that are, you know, maybe coming into the scene now or or soon and are gonna be kind of those early career folks seeking to go into design, what advice would you give them as they're getting going?
I have been asked this question before. I have a particular answer. I come from much more of a graphic design, interactive design, marketing design background. That's what I I came up in in the industry. A lot of that experience that I have has been very hard won, either on the job or self taught. I definitely didn't start out with a lot of the grounding and fundamentals of things like type for grids or layout. Like, I had to fight through that thicket myself and with bosses and coworkers and so on. So as you can imagine, I have been a hiring manager for quite a while at Nava and other places. I've looked a lot of portfolios, a lot of early career designers' portfolios and and their work and the things that they delivered. And I see it, you know, with the the people on my team as well who are, early in their career. A consistent thing that I see is the same thing that I struggle to do with, which is, like, poor typography choices, poor layout choices, poor choices in iconography or color. It's inadvertent. Like, nobody's going out to be like, I'm gonna make this look bad unless you're one of those absurdist meme lords on the Internet. Right? But, the presentation of the thing, if it is poor, then it detracts from the great research that the person is presenting or detracts from this really critical service design work that they're doing or that they're trying to explain. It, like, hides the substance of the design work behind this really shoddy facade. So, my advice is quite simple in that way. Get good at using type. Understand grids. Like, know how to generate a good grid that is flexible across a lot of different context. Like, choose colors that are accessible, but then also expressive. Understand layout and balance on the page, like, on the screen. Layout choices in a a Google Doc are gonna be very different than the choices we make, in a, you know, a PowerPoint slide or, you know, an interactive, screen. So those are the types of things that I think people would need to get good at early because it sets the foundation for all of the other great work that they can do. It it sounds like as you described there, those fundamentals, it sounds a bit like,
someone should be good at those because you don't want them to get in the way of the the higher order stuff you're trying to, like may maybe it's, like, the more just thing you're trying to get to, but without the fundamentals that you stumble, for lack of a better way to put it.
Yeah. That's right. Everyone has been in a presentation, and I mean, virtually. So you're sharing your screen, and maybe somebody has their camera on, and they do that thing where they lean into the screen because they can't read the thing that you're sharing. That like, you don't want that. You want somebody to be able to relax in their chair and just read the the the information that you're presenting. It's not too much. And I understand we're juggling windows and, you know, all sorts of spreadsheets and so on. But getting those fundamentals down then just frees you up for so many other things. Making sure that the colors don't clash frees you up for so many things. So, yeah, it really is, like, just the basics. As we get to the tail end here,
where can others learn more about you and the all the work you're doing at Nava?
Well, of course, I would advise people to to visit our website, visit our public benefit report, which we published for a number of years, and it talks in great detail about our work, and the, the outcomes that we've had for clients. So that's a great, great resource as well. Obviously, you can visit my website, and, people can directly on LinkedIn or, via email and so on. And, yeah, we'll just appreciate anybody taking a look at the work we do at Nava. We're really proud of it. Owen, as a follow-up,
way early in our conversation, you mentioned your book, cross cultural design. Is that something people can find out there in the world if they're interested?
Yes. Actually, I should have mentioned that. So, yes, it's out there. You can go to, bookshop.org, and there's a link there. And, yeah, would also love to have people look at that and comment, or another piece of work that I'm really proud of.
Sonango, thank you so much for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. I've no doubt from our conversation, folks will find a gem to kinda bring into their day and maybe into their work.
Great. Thanks, Ryan. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat,
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