This must be the place
By: Emily Ryan
Tags: Civictech, Accessibility, UX Research, Civil Rights

Talking Heads band members, including lead singer David Byrne, are performing onstage, with a floor lamp centered between them, illuminating a dark background.

It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to run a research effort on my own. In only my second week on the job, the team asked for some insights around how our admins use our civil rights complaint portal to field reports of civil rights violations, centered around how they communicate with complainants via email. I said “Sure! Happy to help!” and dove in, headfirst. Now it must be said that at GoCanvas, I had this amazing researcher, Stephanie, who was just a master at conducting beautifully unbiased research efforts and really gathering deep insights. In the two years we worked together, I learned a ton from observing her do her magic. I say “observe” because that’s largely what I did, when I had time.

So it’s no surprise that I was more than a little rusty when I began asking my first interviewee my initial questions, late last week. I had created a solid script, based on what little I knew about the system and I assumed it would be a very cut and dry effort. After all, these paralegals, admin assistants, office managers, investigators and lawyers can’t be that different when they’re simply opening and responding to the submissions that come in, right? Wrong.

You see, not only do they come from different backgrounds, but they all work in different sections. We have 10 within the Civil Rights team (CRT) and they include Disability (DRS), Education (EOS), Criminal (CRM), Immigration and Employment (IER) etc etc. And even though they’re conducting the same initial tasks — selecting, opening and classifying complaints — they use different verbiage. For starters, there’s a template, an email, a form letter or a response. These might be sent to the submitter, the complainant, the writer, the guardian or the representative. The record of this interaction may be saved, reviewed, commented on, filed or closed. You probably get my drift here but needless to say, one of the really cool, interesting, tough, challenging or unique things about my new role, is learning to see similar things, many ways, through many lenses.

As a PIF, I’m fortunate to interact with so. many. different. people. And ideas! And projects! And challenges! And to do it knowing that even though I come in with a lot of knowledge and background, I have so much more to learn. In fact, I’m learning that I know almost nothing at all. At 45 years old, I’m relearning what it means to think differently. To explore and ask questions. To listen and not assume. To connect with others who are not like me and have completely different career aspirations and goals and to know that it’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with wanting different things. In the private sector this rarely happened. But in the federal civic tech space, where the topic du jour can be autonomous vehicles, voter fraud, cancer research, pandemic response, security incidents, global relationships and just about everything in between, the world around me has expanded so far beyond what I’m used to. I remarked to a colleague that it feels like I have gone back to college and all of my PIF-mates are in different majors, exploring different fields and rewriting their own stories. It’s truly refreshing and with each day, I’m learning, growing, hearing, experiencing or understanding all new areas. And I love it.

Speaking of work… as for the research I mentioned above, I talked to my last interviewee and spent several hours yesterday analyzing what we heard. We ended up with a slew of insights which I’m really looking forward to designing into the next iteration of the portal, website, interface, application or online form.

Feet on the ground, head in the sky

It’s okay, I know nothing’s wrong, nothing…