Helping federal teams get legal clearance for user research.
Problem
In order to build a digital government that truly serves the American public, federal teams need to conduct user research with the people who use its products and services. Unfortunately, a well-intentioned yet outdated law known as PRA (Paperwork Reduction Act), often poses a barrier. Getting legal clearance through the PRA process can be confusing, preventing teams from conducting critical user research.
Approach
I explored ways to make navigating the PRA process easier and more efficient so teams can spend more of their time and energy connecting with the public. Informed by my own user research, I designed a centralized hub that helps teams determine when they need PRA clearance and how to get it. This work is part of my team's multi-year efforts to establish a suite of research operations services to support internal teams.
Impact
Showcasing the prototype has helped garner widespread support for the project throughout my organization and secure continued investment in the project. The website I designed is expected to reduce the time and labor burden associated with the PRA process by hundreds of hours for 600+ employees, increasing both organizational efficiency and federal research teams’ capacity to do more user research, more often.
Role
Product designer
Timeline
Fall 2023 - present
Team
Product manager ● Strategist ● Front-end developer
Status
In progress
Saving 600+ employees hundreds of hours.
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More research with the public, more often.
Process
01/ Breaking down a complicated law
Putting my lawyer hat on
I temporarily suspended my role as a designer to sift through dozens of pages of dense legal language to identify when, where and how PRA might have implications for user research.
Identifying PRA implications
Both recruitment and conducting research sessions are considered “information collections” under PRA and are thus subject to regulation. While the rest of my team turned their attention to other elements of research operations, I zeroed in on these phases of the research lifecycle.
02/ Researching the researchers
I conducted six interviews with researchers across different teams to get a wide range of perspectives on how they navigated PRA considerations throughout their research process.
Research goals
🎯 Identify sources of information researchers turn to for PRA guidance.
🎯 Discover challenges researchers face throughout the PRA process.
Key findings
🔎 PRA guidance is not centralized…
…in a place where researchers can easily find the information they need.
🔎 PRA guidance is not actionable…
…in the context of small-scale, qualitative user research.
🔎 Deciding if clearance is needed…
…is often harder than actually getting the clearance itself.
As a result, researchers waste hundreds of hours trying to figure out PRA instead of doing actual user research. So...
How might we make navigating the PRA process easier?
03/ Defining and designing
Visualizing the researcher journey (below) helped me pinpoint the most confusing parts of the clearance process and start generating potential solutions. Ideas included a chatbot, "starter kit", handbook documentation, diagram of stakeholders, and a fillable form, among others.
Landing on a PRA Navigator
Ultimately, my team and I decided to pursue a web-based platform to serve as a flexible, centralized hub that could host many different kinds of resources as the project evolved and would be relatively straightforward to build, while effectively addressing researcher’s needs.
PRA Navigator can help researchers…
✅ Quickly get an answer to a PRA-related question.
Researchers will be able to determine whether PRA clearance is required, or connect with someone who can help.
✅ Walk through the entire process, step-by-step.
If researchers need PRA clearance, this resource can help guide them through the process, from start to finish.
✅ Become aware of additional PRA considerations.
For example, researchers many not know they need separate PRA clearances for recruitment and research.
Centering researchers’ needs
After synthesizing the data from the interviews, I developed a collection of personas and user stories to put researchers' needs front and center while defining requirements for the PRA Navigator.
Prototyping
The user story map guided the design of a functional mid-fidelity prototype that could meet all the requirements I had defined based on researchers' needs, from first learning about PRA, all the way to getting PRA clearance.
04/ Gathering feedback
Sharing the work
I demoed the prototype during several cross-organization meetings, reaching hundreds of employees. Not only did I get preliminary feedback and volunteers for usability testing, but I also gained the support of key leadership figures who could advocate for this work.
Testing the prototype
I tested the prototype with people in research-adjacent roles who had varying levels of familiarity with PRA to get a wide range of feedback.
Design goals
🎯 Design paths for different audiences.
Researchers are coming with different levels of familiarity and experience with PRA, so it's important to meet them where they are.
🎯 Set expectations and indicate progress.
Because researchers perceive the PRA process as something risky to get wrong, it is important that they can be thorough.
🎯 Visually signal trust and legitimacy.
Researchers generally felt PRA Navigator to be trustworthy but suggested improvements, such as using the U.S. Web Design System.
Iterating
Based on the first round of testing, I sketched out different ways to incorporate the features that would address the design goals, such as including a step-by-step process outline and grouping common tasks based on where a researcher is at in the process.
Conducting additional testing
I conducted another round of testing on the iterations to further refine the designs. After synthesizing the feedback, I adjusted aspects that researchers were still confused about, particularly wording and information architecture.
Designs
Incorporating U.S. Web Design System components
Researchers perceive PRA as something that is risky to get wrong and want to ensure that the information they are following is trustworthy. I used common U.S. Web Design System components to achieve the dependable look and feel of a modern government website and to streamline development.
Different entry points to meet researchers where they’re at
Many researchers shared that they didn't know where to get started with PRA. The homepage not only gives them a place to start but also meets them where they’re at in terms of their current phase of the research process and their desired action.
Interactive tools to build confidence
My research indicated that on of the most confusing parts of the PRA process is determining if clearance is needed at all. I designed interactive questionnaires so researchers can determine whether they need clearance or not by answering a series of questions about their research plans.
Guided form builder to ease process logistics
Researchers who do need PRA clearance for their research found filling out a poorly designed PDF form to be cumbersome and confusing. I designed an automated form builder that sets expectations with a progress indicator and provides helper text along the way.
PRA Navigator can help federal teams connect with the American public and, ultimately, build a better digital government.
Moving forward
Defining key metrics
I began this project with qualitative evidence suggesting that PRA is one of the major barriers to user research with the public; however I wanted to define a more robust set of metrics that would indicate PRA Navigator is both delivering value and making an impact, as well as to precisely measure the savings in time and cost for my organization.
Implementation
As a first step, I published the PRA Navigator content↗ on a publicly available handbook for federal employees.
I am currently working with a front-end developer to code the prototype, and together we are working through technical considerations such as host platform, security, and analytics.
Reflections
Sometimes impact looks like small wins at the speed of government.
Getting a simple website up and running may look like nothing from a private sector tech perspective. However, it takes a great deal of persistence and patience when cutting through the red tape necessary to do the same at the federal level. It’s not flashy, but I’m proud that my work will have a real impact on federal teams and the products and services they build for the American public.
Design is often straightforward - getting people on board is less so!
Behind the designs, it took an incredible amount of effort to coordinate the many different stakeholders involved and get everyone on the same page. I learned a great deal from my more experienced team about how to strategically manage relationships and tell a compelling story to encourage others to come along for the ride.
The ability to zoom in and out is key when working on complex projects.
Because my work on PRA is one piece of a larger Research Operations puzzle, I had to simultaneously focus on the nitty-gritty tasks necessary to push the PRA Navigator product forward while maintaining an awareness of how it fits into my team’s greater goals and roadmap for the project.