Pathways to Impact: Navigating UX Careers in Civic Tech
Discover the diverse pathways to creating a positive impact on the people who use government services through UX from the user experience design and research team at Truss. With backgrounds in diverse fields such as cognitive science and graphic design, these designers and researchers bring unique insights into the challenges and opportunities of working with government agencies. Their stories highlight the importance of user experience design and research in making government services impactful to the people who use them.
Meet our team
As UX Designers and Researchers at Truss, a fully remote digital solutions consulting firm that works with government agencies such as the US Department of Defense, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Department of Labor, we research, design, and test innovative solutions to tricky government problems. We come from various backgrounds and each panelist brings their unique perspective to how they think about UX.
Anna Gingle (she/her): Anna is a UX designer and researcher focused on accessibility. She has been working in civic tech since she graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2021 with a degree in interaction design with a specialization in web and mobile development.
Amanda Siu (she/they): Amanda is a designer/researcher at Truss with a decade of experience in UX design, the last six years of which were in civic tech. She discovered UX via her cognitive science major in college and hasn’t looked back since.
Ryan Brooks (he/him): Ryan is a Design and Research Manager at Truss and has been working in the field for a little over a decade, with the majority of his career being in the private sector working on consumer and enterprise software, but for the last 4 years working with Truss in civic tech. He has a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from the University of Cincinnati and a Master’s of Science in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University.
Madison Ross-Ryan (she/her): Madison is a Senior UX Designer and Researcher at Truss with close to eight years of experience designing for clients both big and small. She is passionate about civic tech and volunteers for U.S. Digital Response and Code312, a local Chicago-based pro-bono tech consultancy. Madison has a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois.
How would you define civic tech?
Anna: Working in civic technology involves collaborating with numerous civic institutions, each united by the goal of leveraging technology to improve the relationship between government services and the people who use them. Our mission is to apply the innovation and efficiency of the private sector to create digital products that are just as intuitive as the ones made by companies like Apple or Google.
Why did you decide to pursue UX work supporting the public sector?
Anna: During my college years, I was part of a capstone project where we were asked to improve the American voting experience. This taught me that at the heart of every project should be a simple mission: to have a positive impact on the end user. It showed me how smart, thoughtful, well-researched UX design in the civic tech space could be a formidable tool in breaking down barriers, making services more accessible, and ensuring that every voice is heard. It's a conviction that has guided me ever since.
Amanda: About 6-7 years ago, I was working in the commercial sector and feeling disillusioned about the lack of oversight and regulation in tech. I started attending a civic tech meetup in Chicago, and felt inspired by the ideas people had for using tech to improve people’s lives. The federal government was also supporting new technology initiatives like 18f and USDS at the time, so I could see the impact that UX could have at a larger scale.
Ryan: Unlike my colleagues, I kinda fell into the public sector. I had been working in design for a while, first on the agency side designing marketing pages for big pharma , then working on a product team for an internal enterprise software. I was looking for a company with a culture where I felt like I could fit in, but also a place where I could solve complex problems. I was bored with the agency work, and the enterprise stuff gave me a taste of bigger challenges, but I wanted more. When presented the opportunity to join Truss, I thought “The government has tons of complex problems to solve.”
Madison: I started my UX journey at a more traditional tech consulting firm, and while I loved the challenges and people I worked with, I felt like I was missing a sense of purpose in my work. I ended up volunteering with a local pro-bono tech consultancy in Chicago and pursued a certificate in Social Innovation Design. Both of those experiences opened my eyes to how I could leverage my design and research skills to make a difference. Eventually, I discovered the Digital Services Coalition, and found Truss through that group.
What project at Truss are you most proud of, and what impact did it have on the community it served? What role did UX design play in its success?
Anna: I am the most proud of MilMove because the whole point of the project was to make moving easier for military service members - so user experience directed the priorities. As part of a broader research initiative, the Department of Defense discovered that service members found moving to be the second most traumatic experience after active combat. Military moves make up about 15% of all moves in the U.S. and there are nearly 100,000 people involved in the facilitation of relocating service members.
Every time one of those individuals is unable to do their job because of antiquated software or a cumbersome process, a service member’s move gets delayed. We learned about blockers like these while conducting user research and addressing those blockers became our immediate focus. Improved UX had a huge impact on the product we eventually built.
Amanda: I’m proud of the work I have done on my current project. Since piloting our product two years ago, we’ve reduced the intake time of Medicaid contracts by 33%. The time it takes for states to prepare their contracts for federal review has been reduced by 50%. This project has given me an appreciation for all the work, care, and collaboration it takes to provide healthcare to 85 million people.
Ryan: I enjoyed the work that I did on a project for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to help create a system for tracking .gov domains. It’s something that you don’t really think about, but every community has these sites (or should) and finding ways to make those domains more accessible and resources more readily available and easy to use is a small but crucial step in building trust with local communities...
How is working as a user experience designer in civic tech similar or different from working in the private sector?
Anna: In civic tech, design isn't just about just making things look good. It’s about creating practical solutions that answer the community’s needs. In the private sector, you might chase the latest trends to attract a specific type of customer. Civic tech design is all about making sure everyone can use what we build and the beauty of it is the impact it makes in a large cross-section of people's lives.
Amanda: I started out in the private sector before going into civic tech. One of my private sector jobs was at a large corporation, and I found some aspects of that experience - the bureaucracy, working across different departments, slow to change - similar to working in government.
Ryan: The KPIs are often different in civic tech. In the private sector it’s about EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), but in civic tech it’s more about impact. What I mean by that is in the private sector working with businesses, companies are mainly focused on revenue. And how to improve revenue. You either cut costs (or make efficiencies) or you sell more. So design is either a tool to help employees get more done in less time to create efficiencies or create tons of value that customers will pay for. But in civic tech, it’s often about improving a broken system so that the general public can have better and more equitable access to something. So oftentimes the KPI is that the system just exists (which honestly can be frustrating).
Madison: Having worked in both the private and public sectors, I think a big difference between the two is scale. While there’s definitely some opportunity for private sector products to have a large scale, designing for government services is inherently large scale to begin with and requires an entirely different mindset when considering the impact of your work. You’re also designing for large and diverse populations, and that brings its own set of unique challenges and opportunities.
What types of skills might be relevant for working in civic tech?
Anna: There’s a growing demand for practitioners who specialize in accessibility. The government has a law called Section 508. It was a first step toward making inclusive government digital services. It’s been a law for 20 years but we still have inaccessible government websites. The government is now tightening up enforcement with M-24-08 Strengthening Digital Accessibility and the Management of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
On another note, people in technical roles are an invaluable part of the equation, but so are the people who identify the community needs in the first place. Civic tech isn’t just for tech people.
Madison: As designers and researchers at Truss, we work on cross-functional teams that include roles such as: Product Managers, Content Designers, Delivery Managers, and Software Engineers. Within each of these roles, we may have specific specialties and interests that we can focus on, such as accessibility, security, AI, and data (to name a few). Outside of our internal teams, we work with client Product Owners, digital services experts, and various other roles within client teams. What this is meant to demonstrate is that civic tech is varied and growing - there is a place for you if you want it.
What do you think the future outlook for working in civic tech may look like? Do you think this future is booming or has it plateaued already?
Anna: We’ve had a lot of impact but there are several initiatives still in their infancy. Accessibility is a movement to watch out for. Equal access to government information is every human’s right and the government is finally prioritizing inclusive digital services. The General Services Administration’s FY 2023 Governmentwide Section 508 Assessment found more than 75% of respondents are at or below average with respect to Section 508 compliance. There is a lot of opportunity to make government accessible and we’ve barely gotten started.
Amanda: Half of the government’s websites aren’t mobile-friendly. Almost half aren’t accessible to those with disabilities. There is plenty of work still to be done to make government websites usable by people of all backgrounds and experiences.
Ryan: I think it would be really depressing if we’re at the height of civic tech right now. I feel like there is a lot of ground to cover just to catch up with today’s trending technologies, but I’m seeing firsthand how some agencies are excited about the possibilities of technologies with LLMs and AI, but we need to be thoughtful in how we use such technologies.
What advice would you give someone ready to make the transition into civic tech?
Ryan: This is a little bit of a generic answer in that it’s not just for civic tech. With what I know today, this is how I’d go about getting my first case studies, because without them it’s hard to get a UX job period. I’d find a way to articulate the value of UX design in a way that a 3rd grader would understand it. Something like "I make sure your favorite games and apps are super easy and fun to use! So more people love using them and keep coming back!" Then I’d reach out to my entire (and I mean entire network) letting them know what I’m trying to do and that I’m taking on 5 free clients to get some practice and feedback. Then I’d start charging after I have a couple case studies, but that way you can start learning with real world scenarios. Also as I do this work, I’d pay extra attention to my failures on projects and talk about them in my case studies and what I learned. As a Design and Research Manager, I appreciate more about what you learn from failures than what you happened to get right, so wear your failures like a badge of honor.
Madison: My biggest piece of advice is that you can be involved in public-interest technology work without working at a public-interest technology firm. If doing this work interests you, go out and find local groups you can volunteer with and grow your network. This will help you gain real work experience you can leverage as case studies in your portfolio. You might also find out that this work isn’t for you, and that’s totally okay too! Either way, don’t be discouraged if you aren’t doing this for your day job just yet. Be patient, and share your passion for public service with those who can benefit from it.
