Working on hard problems and mitigating risk through design.

1. Redefining risk through design in
government services
Dana Chisnell
Center for Civic Design
When ‘fail fast’ isn’t an option

2. Back story
United States Digital Service —
a startup inside government

3. My assignment
Get USCIS ready for
executive action

4. Fear, uncertainty, and
risk mitigation

5. The Agile factory

6. I come from the future

7. User stories should be
user stories
For (eventual) service design

8. How to answer
One. Million. Questions.
Exposure hours with users

9. Design is not a technical problem

10. Everything is awesome.
Sort of. Almost. Ok, baby steps.

11. Lessons learned

12. I couldn’t do all the design myself.
With. Not for.

13. Artifacts. Visualizations. Prototypes.
Usability testing.
Show. Don’t tell.

14. 2 hours every 6 weeks
Every person in the organization
Radical exposure to users.

15. Soft launches. Slow roll outs. Pilots. Short,
disposable experiments.
Redefine risk.

16. The best you can do is accelerate
the pace.
No skipping ahead.

17. ▪ With. Not for.
▪ Show. Don’t tell.
▪ Radical exposure to users.
▪ Redefine risk.
▪ No skipping ahead.

18. Afterword

19. Thank you.

20. Get in touch!
Dana Chisnell
dana@civicdesign.org
@danachis
civicdesign.org
@civicdesign