18F Blog

When the Employment and Training Administration’s CareerOneStop team set out to redesign the career, training, and job resources sections of the CareerOneStop site, they didn’t immediately begin rewriting code. Instead, they embraced a user-centered approach that focused on the user experience (UX). Read on to learn more about their findings.

In February, consultant and author Steve Portigal left behind the California sunshine to speak at the 18F headquarters. Steve — principal at Portigal Consulting, author, podcaster, and ramen aficionado — expounded on the topic of bad ideas: Namely, how they add value to the creative process and why we should seek them out.

You can find 18F in D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, Dayton, and New York. Our rapidly growing team is home to a variety of roles, including these: Software Makers, Experience Designers & Researchers, DevOps, Visual and Interaction Designers, Writers & Content Strategists, Product Managers and whatever other skills you can bring to the team.

Since October, 18F has been bringing in noted individuals from the software development world to discuss their work, and we’re excited to kick off a new, design-focused series this Friday, February 20 (10:30 a.m. ET) with Steve Portigal, author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights and host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast.

I’ve worked at 18F for exactly six days. During those six days, I learned about a few products that I wish I’d known about while at my previous job. These products would not only have saved me hours of work (itself a bonus), but they also would have fostered long-term collaboration.