This article reviews two examples of how Nava has used open-source technologies to bring human-centered testing practices to government services software.
This guide touches on everything from Code for America’s core research philosophy, to our approach to ethics and trauma-informed research, to specific research methods. It also includes plenty of practical tips on planning and executing research, as well as how to synthesize your findings into action.
The CUTGroup book explains how civic user testing (paying residents to test civic apps) can allow for more community engagement in civic tech. This book covers how to do UX testing, community engagement, and digital skills in one civic tech system.
This paper examines three key questions in participatory HCI: who initiates, directs, and benefits from user participation; in what forms it occurs; and how control is shared with users, while addressing conceptual, ethical, and pragmatic challenges, and suggesting future research directions.
This paper examines the challenges of participation in large-scale public projects. Taking its offset in a case-study of the development of a new public multimedia library, the paper discusses methods and values of Participatory Design in the face of the challenges that a project of this scale entails. These challenges concern how to address and manage a heterogeneous group of stakeholders and end-users, how to inform stakeholders and establish participation as a relevant activity, the development of new techniques and technologies to scaffold participation, and the interplay between iterative development and institutional transformation.
User research requires working as a team, since it necessitates running sessions with participants, observing and moderating research sessions, analyzing and synthesizing results, as well as communicating results effectively.
Dana Chisnell describes work leading a team of researchers to interview people from across the US on their experiences applying for unemployment and other benefits during the pandemic.
Digital interfaces are the bridges to our communities. Technology can’t fix the systemic inequality revealed by COVID19, but it can help make connections with our communities better. This tool kit and website 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.
This article describes the necessity of building an inclusive research environment that empowers participants, as well as techniques for creating such environments in both in-person and remote capacities.
Code for America highlights the importance of recognizing the effects of intergenerational trauma on communities that have been systemically marginalized when conducting research.
