Collaborative Form Design in New York State: A FormFest 2025 Profile

For better or worse, we live our lives online, but not always when it comes to government. In that realm, interactions often involve a form that’s either confined to a PDF or available only on paper. As far as Leo Vogel is concerned, this is more than a mere inconvenience.

“Modernizing forms for state and federal governments is one of the most important tasks we can work on as civil servants working for the betterment of the public,” said Vogel, lead product designer for the New York State Design System in the state’s Office of Information Technology Services.

That’s not hyperbole—at the technology agency, Vogel and Director of User Research Jesse Gardner are reimagining the form design system into a streamlined process that helps even non-designers move quickly from bare-bones mock-ups to detailed prototypes. The goal is to enable people to use a collaborative whiteboard program, regardless of their technical background capabilities. In doing so, they design simple form prototypes that experienced designers can later refine into realistic versions—a streamlined process that decreases unnecessary steps and invites broader stakeholder input early on. 

“Previously, the work in a whiteboarding or wireframing tool had to be duplicated and re-done, which was perceived as wasted time and effort by leadership, which led to design mostly starting with high-fidelity realistic forms which are harder for non-designers to make, and focus too much on visual design,” Vogel said. “It is better to start with simpler, grayscale sketch-like designs to work out the content, layout, and order of forms, so that decision-makers and users don’t focus so much on how the form looks.”

The rollout is still in the early stages, though the method has been used to build several forms from start to finish. The next step, Gardner said, is to create a standardized set of backend tools to process and store form data. If it goes well, the system will go live for employees in the coming months.

“We have strong adoption from design teams, which is a solid starting point,” he said. “From there, we’ll be able to support more productized services, like form delivery and submission. But full adoption will take more time across a platform landscape as diverse as New York State.”

Jesse Gardner: Designers, engineers, humans

Back in 2016, Jesse Gardner launched Troy Stories, an online collection of photos of strangers on the streets of Troy, New York. The project featured residents’ stories in their own words, similar to Humans of New York. There was no goal beyond authenticity and learning to discover people where they were, but it ended up revealing something greater.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but that project taught me the power of storytelling in building empathy,” he said. “Funny enough, it’s also how I met my current boss and ended up in the role I’m in now.”

Gardner joined the Office of Information Technology Services in 2023 after a 20-year career in the tech industry as a solo entrepreneur and employee in larger organizations. He primarily worked on platform systems development, first in design and then in engineering. He still toggles between the two, helping each sector understand the ideas and needs of the other.

“I love working at the intersection of design and engineering in an organization full of engineers,” he said. “Designers care deeply about users and outcomes, but sometimes struggle to connect those ideas to technical realities. My background helps me translate good design patterns into practical engineering solutions.”

Gardner’s background also gives him a clear-eyed view of the joy and the agony of public sector work. He cites the public sector’s comparatively glacial pace of implementation as the main drawback, and credits it to greater oversight and larger bureaucracy. However, he views even that as a potential positive, he said.

“I’m lucky to work with thoughtful people trying to reduce that drag or find smarter paths through it.”

Additionally, he views the challenges as minor compared to the positive benefits of the experience. “It’s easier to get out of bed in the morning when the work is improving life for New Yorkers versus improving the bottom line for shareholders,” he said. “And I find that mission helps center motivations across the organization. We may disagree about a lot of things, but what actually helps people?”

Leo Vogel: Systems thinking

Vogel joined the New York State Design System team last November, 10 months after Governor Kathy Hochul called for consistent design and navigation of  the state’s public websites and applications. Although there was significant work to do, this was nothing new for Vogel, who came to the role with 10 years of experience in UX design and had built three design systems from scratch. 

Doing it again did not feel daunting; instead, Vogel was excited.“My mind is quite systems-focused, so working on design systems is a great fit for my skills and personal strengths,” he said. “There’s still so much exciting work ahead of us. I believe this could be the most impactful work of my career.”

Systems thinking, a habit he first cultivated in high school, extends to every part of Vogel’s life. It’s a structural tool for him, but it is also a universal part of being human, he said.

“Task management systems, calendar systems, health tracking systems, life planning systems—I’m very system-focused, and I like to be organized and plan far into the future,” he said. “Humans build and operate within systems to provide structure and order to our lives. Systems help us work and play together, and to make sense of the world and universe in which we live.”

But not all systems are created equal. After transitioning into public service, Vogel ran headlong into a near-universal pain point for anyone who has worked in an office: Microsoft Office.

“I’ve previously worked solely for startups, where I was used to using Slack and Gmail,” Vogel said. “It was uncomfortable at first, and I missed those more flexible tools that have a better user experience. But in time, I’ve gotten used to [Microsoft] Teams and Outlook. It has helped me become more familiar with new tools, which I always think is a positive.”