Blog

Giving data a soul: Using human-centered design to create powerful data visualizations

February 15, 2023

Data visualizations are a crucial tool to help us make sense of the massive amounts of data out there, but how many times have you seen a data visualization that you couldn’t understand?

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Build an innovation culture by using data to learn, not to evaluate performance

February 08, 2023

At its best, data is a tool for learning and innovation. It can help agencies understand markets better, increase efficiency, and improve decision-making.

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Engineering chaos: a guide to building a game day

January 31, 2023

One of the critical aspects of supporting large scale infrastructure is the ability to respond to potentially harmful issues that can arise throughout a project’s lifecycle.

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A cloud migration is like a kitchen remodel

January 25, 2023

Organizations considering a migration to the cloud may not immediately think that television shows like “Help! I Wrecked My House,” or “Rescue my Renovation” are relevant to the work that they are doing. But it just so happens that things like renovating a kitchen or putting an addition on your house can hold valuable lessons for moving systems to the cloud.

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Conversation design: A tool for inclusivity

January 19, 2023

It may seem obvious, but often forms feel more like interrogations than conversations. State your name. Next. Phone number. Next. They can lack any sense of dialogue, but also feel downright rude.

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Pushup: a new tool for creating dynamic web apps

January 11, 2023

To build and maintain server-side web applications faster and easier, we’ve created a new tool: Pushup. We designed Pushup for the Go programming language as a page-oriented, server-side web framework, similar to applications developed in PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Django for Python.

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One year since the President’s executive order on customer experience, and much remains to be done

December 15, 2022

A year ago, the Biden administration released the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, commonly referred to as the CX EO.

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Why defining your product is an essential question in government digital services

December 09, 2022

One of the most important questions in government digital services is “what is our product?“

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Teamwork makes the dream work: Managing effective product analytics projects

November 09, 2022

Whether you’re starting a new product analytics collaboration or trying to get a current one back on track, good partnerships require a well-structured, traceable process.

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Running usability sessions with assistive technology users: a guide for beginners

November 02, 2022

Even with accessibility specialists at our side, there are additional ways accessibility newcomers can and should prepare to run research with assistive technology users.

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Platforms: More value, more quickly, more securely

October 27, 2022

Adopting a platform strategy should be a key component of how government agencies design and deliver digital services.

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A look under the hood of the new student loan debt relief application

October 21, 2022

As we did with covidtests.gov, let’s take a quick look and see what we can learn about the implementation of this application from a systems design perspective.

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