Research
Co-Designing Civic Tech with Communities
Participatory research with residents, case workers, and policymakers to build trust into benefits and housing software.
We ran co-design cycles with residents, case workers, and policy teams to rebuild benefits and housing software around transparency and trust.
Methods
- Journey mapping with residents to surface pain points in applications and renewals.
- Shadowing case workers to observe how policy and workload shape system use.
- Prototyping sessions where mixed groups sketched dashboards and status views together.
Key artifacts
- Status receipts with clear timestamps, next steps, and named ownership for each application.
- Dual-view queues: resident-facing plain language paired with staff-facing flags and notes.
- Proof upload guidance that distinguishes required vs optional documents, reducing overload.
Impact
- Residents reported fewer surprises; inbound calls about status dropped in pilot sites.
- Case workers triaged faster with clearer queues and saw fewer duplicate document uploads.
- Policy teams codified new review gates to prevent silent denials.
Co-design shortened the distance between people who feel the pain and people who can fix it. Shared artifacts became living documents that guided rollout and training.
