Reinventing the UX of Unemployment Assistance in a Major US State
Date completed: 2022
Note: The product images on this page have been “sanitized”, meaning they have been stripped of confidential, sensitive, or proprietary details to maintain client privacy - in other words, the actual product I launched is far more complex in its visual and UX but cannot be shown on my portfolio due to NDA constraints.
Role: Lead Service Designer and UX Strategist
Key Contributions: UX Strategy, Service Blueprint, Future-State Journey
TL;DR
During the height of the pandemic, we partnered with a large US state government to redesign the unemployment and re-employment experiences for claimants of unemployment benefits, job seekers, and employers. The agency had been built upon decades of legacy technologies and needed to modernize during Covid to rapidly respond to the 5x increase in need for unemployment assistance. My role was to i) develop a future state service blueprint across the Customer Experience (CX) and Systems and Processes (S&P) workstreams; ii) design wireframes for “quick-wins” for the agency’s website; iii) build a research compendium of the qualitative and quantitative insights from marginalized citizens e.g., non-native speakers, less tech-savvy populations.
The Impact
I developed 44 customer sub-journeys, designed 20+ quick-UI wins for the agency’s website to improve the experience of applying for unemployment assistance, and conducted a state-wide quantitative survey to inform the state’s future-state UX roadmap.
The Service Blueprint
I used a service blueprint as a tool for prioritizing opportunities and modernization initiatives by illustrating the impact that back-end systems, processes, and operations have on front-end user experiences, touchpoints, and services, and vice versa.
