Blog

Modernizing how Medicare beneficiaries find and enroll in coverage

April 09, 2020

Our approach to the Medicare Plan Finder was to build a tool and process that would allow us to continuously improve what we provided to beneficiaries and those who support them.

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Ad Hoc wins contract to continue support of HealthCare.gov

February 25, 2020

Ad Hoc is honored by CMS’s continued trust in our team, and we’re thrilled to continue putting our team’s skills towards creating an intuitive and reliable experience for people signing up for healthcare.

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Four myths about applying human-centered design to government digital services

February 20, 2020

While human-centered design (HCD) is gaining traction, its underlying concepts are sometimes misunderstood. This can mislead teams into thinking they’re working in a human-centered way when in fact, their work is largely driven by requirements.

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Accessibility without fear and beyond compliance

February 07, 2020

Accessibility isn't just about checking a box. It's about an equitable, inclusive future for all.

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Why design skills are a power-up for researchers

January 23, 2020

Figuring out your research questions, finding participants, and doing the research are only part of the challenge. Perhaps the most significant work comes when you need to tell the story of your research.

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Dependency audits on JavaScript projects

December 17, 2019

To help improve the security of our projects, we integrated a way to audit our application dependencies into our agile development process.

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Anthropology techniques in human-centered design: The deep hang

November 22, 2019

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has a great story about a wink. If you’re in a crowded room and you happen to see someone twitch their eye, what do you think: That they just shared an intimate joke with someone? That they have a nervous tic? That an eyelash is stuck in...

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The case for listening to enterprise users

November 12, 2019

For companies that rely on consumer sales, there’s a clear business case for creating intuitive, pleasurable user experiences. But what about situations where the consumer or end user is not the customer? Where the organization is the customer, there may seem to be less incentive to design around the needs...

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Ad Hoc awarded contract to support VA healthcare modernization

November 05, 2019

Ad Hoc, as part of a team led by prime contractor Liberty IT Solutions, LLC (Liberty), has been awarded a contract to support a critical Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare modernization project.

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Navigating government barriers to human-centered design

October 22, 2019

Human-centered design practitioners in government face an entirely different world of constraints and incentives than their industry peers. For human-centered design folks entering government work, these constraints can feel like a barrier to designing better services.

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Human-centered design helps government make better decisions

October 16, 2019

Why is human-centered design different? Why should you pay attention to this term, and how can it add value and meaning to government work?

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Design systems in government: How to ease handoffs

October 11, 2019

The end of a contract and subsequent transition represents a risk: not only will the system potentially sit idle or be forgotten, but the culture change you’ve been trying to effect may stop as well.

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