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Back to basics in the age of AI
on June 18, 2024
The federal government is abuzz with conversation about the way that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change the game. Since 18F partners with agencies to drive technology modernization forward, our ability to navigate the opportunities and risks associated with AI is critical. But as we’re learning new things, we also find ourselves going back to basics. As we evaluate and use AI, we can rely on many of the same practices that we apply to any other new technology. Read on for a quick overview of AI, its place in government today, and the techniques and frameworks we’re using as we navigate this new landscape.
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Introducing the UX Guide
on August 4, 2020
At GSA’s 18F, one thing we do on every project is human-centered design. We use the broader term user experience (UX) design to refer to a set of human-centered methods and practices we use in our work. Our new UX Guide documents some of our practices and holds helpful resources.
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Design & research in critical times
on June 2, 2020
18F staff is distributed across the country and the majority of our research has been and will continue to be facilitated remotely. We are sharing our experience to help guide designers and researchers as they adapt to new ways of working and provide some additional considerations to keep in mind while conducting research in critical times.
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Even with a design system, you still need a designer
on February 6, 2020
The US Web Design System gives flexibility so teams can build the right solution for users, but there are still plenty of design decisions that teams need to make to be successful.
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Introducing USWDS 2.0: Reinvent the experience, not the wheel
on April 8, 2019
Today, we’re launching U.S. Web Design System 2.0 (USWDS 2.0), a new foundation for the future of our design system. This new version was designed to make it easier for any project to integrate USWDS and use it to support both your mission and the needs of your audience.
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Introduction to remote moderated usability testing, part 2: How
on November 20, 2018
This is the second in a two-part series exploring the basics of running a remote moderated usability test. In part one, we explored usability testing at a high level: what it is and why it’s important. In this post we’ll review a five-step process for conducting your first round of tests
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Introduction to remote moderated usability testing, part 1: What and why
on November 14, 2018
In this two-part series, we’ll provide an introduction to remote moderated usability testing. In part one, we’ll explain what usability testing is and why it’s important, differentiate usability testing from user acceptance testing, and talk about things that aren’t required to do a usability test
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Two exercises for improving design research through reflective practice
on October 23, 2018
Maturing your design research practice is a bit like honing your skills at cooking. Experienced researchers rely on a refined set of sensibilities, or tastes, in their use and application of research methods; they create, curate, and refine informational recipes that turn raw data into palatable insights. And just like cooking, everyone can improve in their research abilities with a bit of reflective practice
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Introducing Accessibility for Teams
on July 10, 2018
The Accessibility Guild in the Technology Transformation Services (TTS) at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) set out to understand how people in different roles practice accessibility. We asked designers, developers, and product managers across our organization to share their accessibility practices, from self-testing to asking for help.
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Ask 18F — Can you share any tips or suggestions on designing surveys and forms?
on April 5, 2018
Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by federal employees. Our technical experts aim to provide you helpful resources and a good starting point to tackle your problem. Got a question? No matter how small the task or how big the project, email us at 18f@gsa.gov
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A new home for the federal plain language community
on February 22, 2018
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is one of the longest-standing champions for great content and user experience in government. A small team from 18F worked closely with DigitalGov and PLAIN to redesign plainlanguage.gov, making it more modern and usable.
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Getting prepared to prototype
on January 30, 2018
In product development, we often use prototypes to understand user needs and reduce risk. Prototypes are a great way to test out ideas or approaches before you actually commit to building anything, but governments are not always set up to develop and use prototypes efficiently before building digital services.
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Building a large-scale design system: How we created a design system for the U.S. government
on October 3, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards launched in September 2015 as a visual style guide and UI component library with the goal of bringing a common design language for government websites all under one hood. Learn how the team unified a complex system with numerous rules to serve users from all corners of the country.
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3 ways to manage research projects remotely
on September 27, 2017
At 18F, we have employees across the U.S. Over time, we’ve cultivated our best practices for distributed teams and design methods. Yet, doing research as a remote team is still really hard. Here are some things that we’ve found make it easier.
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Walking the talk: what went into the Method Cards’ tune up
on September 21, 2017
Recently, 18F released a new version of the Method Cards, a collection of tools that offer simple, “how-to” descriptions of research and design methods with a special emphasis on the use of those methods in government work. With this new release, the Method Cards have become easier to read and understand, as well as easier to print and circulate.
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How the U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses the U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 30, 2017
In this second post in our series, we met with the team at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and learned how they used the Standards to train, develop, and design their various websites and applications.
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NASA’s journey with the U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 21, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards are currently implemented on hundreds of government sites, with an audience of more than 26 million monthly users, and they’ve been recommended by the Office of Management and Budget for all government agencies. We chatted with Brandon Ruffridge, Senior Software Developer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, to talk about his team’s use of the U.S. Web Design Standards.
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U.S. Web Design Standards releases version 1.0
on March 13, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards are a library of design guidelines and code to help government developers quickly create trustworthy, accessible, and consistent digital government services. Last week, we announced the 1.0 release of the Standards, a milestone that signals the Standards are a stable, trustworthy resource for government designers and developers.
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Charting the future of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on December 22, 2016
As part of the latest release of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards, we updated our design principles to better represent the evolving goals of this project. This update shows how we’re growing our open source community, focusing on experimenting with more complex components and maturing the Standards to be more mobile-focused.
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Iterative workplace design at the Denver Federal Center
on October 14, 2016
Not long ago, the General Service Administration’s regional headquarters on the Denver Federal Center campus looked like a stereotypical office space; today, it is a modern workplace thanks to the iterative work of the Denver GSA’s design team.
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Taking an agile approach to content
on May 31, 2016
At 18F, we work in an agile way — in other words, we base our designs on user needs, conduct usability testing, iterate quickly, and release MVPs (minimum viable products) rather than highly finalized releases. We take an agile approach to content too.
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The user-centered redesign of IdentityTheft.gov
on May 24, 2016
IdentityTheft.gov is user-friendly and intentional. We talk to the team behind the redesign about the user research that went into content and design decisions for the site.
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Reimagining federal websites with the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on May 17, 2016
Andrew Miller, a user-interface designer and front end web developer working with Sandia National Labs, decided to use the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards to reimagine cia.gov as well as a prototype for a new mobile and web experience for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
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Making a distributed design team work
on April 27, 2016
There are now over 30 of us on the Experience Design team. Often, designers on the same project are not in the same location. Here are some techniques we’ve developed to help us work effectively when we aren’t in the same room or even the same times zone.
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Making more consistent decisions with design principles: A new 18F guide
on April 8, 2016
Design principles are concise, specific guidelines for generating and then evaluating ideas and artifacts. We had trouble finding detailed instructions for making and using design principles online. So we decided to write our own.
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Three teams using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards talk about their experiences
on April 5, 2016
In the five months since we launched the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards over a dozen websites have used components of the Draft Standards on their sites. Recently, we talked to three federal web designers about their experiences using the Draft Standards.
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How we share a visual style across multiple sites
on March 30, 2016
In developing a redesign for cloud.gov, we needed a technical solution to coding the visual style that would scale to multiple sites with separate codebases without requiring us to copy code. Our solution is our “shared style library”, a library of CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts that can be distributed to multiple codebases to create a shared visual style.
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How to integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into existing projects
on March 23, 2016
One of the most common questions we receive is: Should I integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into my existing project? The answer is: it depends.
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Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards better through your feedback
on March 16, 2016
Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.
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Introducing the CSS coding style guide
on January 11, 2016
18F is releasing our CSS coding style guide, which specifies our best practices and rules for writing consistent, maintainable CSS code.
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The power of mindset: Normative’s Matthew Milan
on December 3, 2015
Matthew Milan, founder of and design leader at software design firm Normative, visited 18F’s main office to share his insights into the importance of the shared mindset and how your team can develop its own. Here are some of his takeaways.
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How we use a lean approach to product design
on November 20, 2015
Here at 18F, several product teams (including CALC, Discovery, and EITI) have been experimenting with a lean product design approach to building software, often called “lean UX.” In a nutshell, it is a set of ideas about design and project management that help us focus not just on what we build, but on the outcomes our tools enable.
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Choose design over architecture
on November 17, 2015
Conventional wisdom often encourages engineers to start with a big architectural overview, but this kind of a grand plan usually leads to technical-debt. Instead of using an architecture-first plan, you should focus on user experience design and software design to help your project avoid technical debt.
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GSA.gov refreshed with eye toward mobile users
on November 17, 2015
GSA unveiled a refreshed gsa.gov website yesterday with a more crisp design layout, improved usability, and features geared more toward mobile users.
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Introducing the U.S. Web Design Standards
on September 28, 2015
The U.S. Web Design Standards is the U.S. government’s very own set of common UI components and visual styles for websites. It’s a resource designed to make things easier for government designers and developers, while raising the bar on what the American people can expect from their digital experiences.
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Four questions with the CFPB design team
on September 21, 2015
Designers Mollie Bates and Natalia Fitzgerald will be speaking tomorrow at 18F on their experience building the design team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), as well as more generally on their approaches to user-centered design.
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New citizenship resources demystify the naturalization process
on September 21, 2015
For many people, September conjures up happy memories of heading back to school, new backpack and supplies in tow. For new and aspiring citizens, September has additional significance: It’s when the federal government celebrates Constitution Week, a weeklong observance commemorating the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
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Reimagining the immigration process
on September 8, 2015
Since November, I’ve been working with a team from 18F and USCIS to develop my.uscis.gov, a customer-facing site to help users navigate their relationship with the agency. USCIS approached 18F about the partnership because they wanted to improve the experience for millions of users like my husband and me.
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Making websites more like M&Ms
on August 26, 2015
Web standards and accessibility expert Aaron Gustafson recently came to 18F to speak about progressive enhancement and to challenge designers to improve user experience across browsers and devices.
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Introducing 18F Design Methods
on August 10, 2015
We’re thrilled to introduce the beta deck of 18F Design Methods, a collection of research and design practices that we use to better understand and serve the users of our products.
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Imagining a water cooler for the digital age
on June 24, 2015
Last week, information architect Thomas Vander Wal came to 18F to lead a discussion on his research into social and internal collaboration in the workspace.
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Dan Brown: The art of conflict in design process
on May 27, 2015
On Friday, author and designer Dan Brown gave a talk at 18F. “Stop fighting, start designing,” centered around the design process and inherent conflict therein.
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Five questions with Dan Brown
on May 19, 2015
Dan Brown, co-founder of D.C.-based design firm EightShapes and author of Communicating Design and Designing Together, has spent years studying how and why conflict arises in the workplace, its centrality to good design, the differences between healthy and unhealthy conflict, and more. Dan will be speaking at 18F on Friday, May 22 at 1:30 PM.
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The intersection of art and technology
on April 28, 2015
Earlier this month, I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for the first time. I was there to see a special exhibit featuring the pop singer Bjӧrk, who is currently presenting a retrospective of her life’s work as a musician, artist and technologist. The retrospective spans back from her early beginnings as a childhood folk singer in Iceland all the way through to her most current album release.
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A day in the life of an 18F content designer
on March 12, 2015
In preparation for our one-year anniversary, we at 18F are introducing a new blog feature — our Day in the Life Series. Once a month, a different team member will share the details of their typical day in the office. Up first is Kate Garklavs, Content Designer.
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Five ways to turn a bad idea into a great one: Steve Portigal event recap
on February 26, 2015
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.
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Five questions with Steve Portigal
on February 18, 2015
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.
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