I work closely with software engineers, product managers and stakeholders to design government APIs that answer people’s questions and expose the right data in a secure way. My research involves:
Understanding what transactions end-users (meaning people who use government services) want to carry out.
What data end-users send to perform these transactions and in what format?
What information/status updates they need to successfully conduct the transaction?
Understanding how these data are processed, stored, and acted upon once it reaches the government agency, and by whom.
Understanding how third-party apps use this data to architect API and endpoints.
For this purpose I take a multi-phased approach to research. And I work closely with engineering leads, product leads and product owners to align the phases of user research with technical discovery and delivery to ensure that research feeds engineering work and decision-making instead of blocking it.
This multi-phased approach involves:
Conducting interviews/workshops with stakeholders to define their objectives and understand the data they want to make available.
Researching process manuals and existing documentation. I then do a first pass at mapping the process and the staff involved in processing the data. I then ask stakeholders to review and help recruit Subject Matter Experts involved in the given transaction we’re designing for.
Interviewing end-users about their needs and roadblocks. I usually show them a form they would fill out and ask them how they would fill it out to understand what data they add.
Conducting remote contextual inquiries with Subject Matter Experts. I ask them to process forms, or show me their part of the process. I also conduct collaborative mapping exercises where I show them the process map and ask them to help me clarify or correct my understanding of the process.
Involving engineering, product and stakeholders in all the phases of research. My teammates usually attend research sessions and we collaboratively figure out what follow-up questions to ask.
Once my team has a good understanding of the process, I work closely with engineering and product to design APIs that 1) expose the right data sources 2) do what end-users expect them to do 3) are compliant with the agency’s rules and regulations.
This work often involves working closely with engineering to review APIs schema and technical diagrams. But it has also involved successfully recommending process changes to the agency to ensure that paper processes can be fully digital.