This tool kit brings together emergent best practices, workflows, and tools that communities, educators, mutual aid groups, designers, artists and activists are using for community building, and how design needs to change to best suit people, right now.
Minnesota is a good example of an organization that started small in its drive to integrate benefits programs. For instance, its recent statewide rollout of its online integrated benefit application website, MNbenefits.mn.gov, started as a pilot in 2020 with Code for America. The pilot encompassed two counties including Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located. The pilot later expanded to four counties, then 16 and a tribal nation. The final roll out, which took 12 months to implement, included the state’s 87 counties and three tribal nations.
Testing (and re-testing) your designs with users will help you build the best possible product. Our Validate Methods cover varied testing scenarios and potential user groups.
This webinar provides insight on behavioral science concepts and how states can put such ideas into practice to tailor engagement, messaging, and independence planning, as well as promote participation in SNAP E&T programs.
County workers typically spend most of their time trying to get income information right during eligibility interviews. This article provides several recommendations for asking about income, accounting for cognitive biases, under-reporting, and complexities in reporting income.
The ubiquity of mobile devices makes it imperative to build “mobile first” services, i.e. services built with the expectation that they will primarily be accessed on mobile devices. This article also outlines important considerations and suggestions for implementing mobile-first user interfaces.
Our work with Pennsylvania to implement user experience and user interface changes shows that innovation can be easier to implement than it might seem.
Article describing the “time tax,” the costs to people applying or benefits in terms of spending substantial amounts of time navigating user-unfriendly interfaces. The article describes the necessity of simplifying safety-net programs and cross-coordinating across various social service programs.
