madeinamerica.gov
The website my team delivered for the White House gives the American public transparency into the decisions that make the US government the single largest purchaser of consumer goods in the world.
The Executive Order
The lifecycle of a waiver revealed key touchpoints for the different audiences. This was critical for understanding the perspectives and values for the different audiences.
On Jan 25, 2021 POTUS issued a new executive order to push federal agencies to buy more products made in the U.S.:
With this order, President Biden is ensuring that when the federal government spends taxpayer dollars they are spent on American-made goods by American workers and with American-made component parts. This Executive Order fulfills President Biden’s promise to make Buy American real and close loopholes that allow companies to offshore production and jobs while still qualifying for domestic preferences.
Included in this order was the creation of the Made in America Office (MIAO). It is the job of the MIAO to review requests for waivers from these laws, evaluating them based on how they will support U.S. manufacturing and more resilient supply chains.
madeinamerica.gov
As the MIAO reviews these requests for exemptions, it has a responsibility to ensure that any waivers from Made in America laws are applied clearly, consistently, and transparently across federal agencies.
It was my team’s responsibility to give the office the tools it needed to make that happen. We did it through a combination of human-centered research and design with an agile mindset. We stayed nimble and able to respond to requests within hours rather than days, and we never lost our focus on solving problems for people.
What do people need? Why do they need it?
User stories are representations of small instances in peoples’ lives. They are a type of scenario used in human-centered design processes that teams use to empathize with a user and, from there, generate ideas that fit into the user’s life.
The user stories for Made in America came from the set of requirements compiled from discovery materials, qualitative research, and interviews with representative users from three different groups: Contracting Officers, MIAO Reviewers, and Federal Contractors. I took the requirements’ descriptions of functionality and features and from them distilled the fundamental problems that members of the audience were trying to solve.
“As a Contracting Officer, I want to specify the correct code so that the waiver request is valid.”
Contracting Officers are federal employees representing government agencies. Their role in this context is to request waivers to the restrictions outlined by the executive order. They do this by completing a form that describes their need for an exemption. The last thing they want is to spend time writing up their request only to find out later that they have to do it all over.
“As a MIAO Reviewer, I want the form to allow only existing codes so that I can spend less time addressing invalid forms.”
MIAO Reviewers are federal employees working for OMB. They review waiver requests submitted by Contracting Officers. Any forms that are incomplete or have the wrong information just get in the way of their real work evaluating whether requests are in line with MiA policies and laws.
“As a Federal Contractor, I want codes to be valid so that I can find the information I am looking for.
Federal Contractors are small businesses that work with the federal government. For this group, information about waivers is a valuable resource for understanding market behavior and identifying business opportunities. People in this group want to know that they have a complete and accurate picture of the market.
The Human-Centered Strategy
Language is key.
A coherent HCD strategy centers on identifying the common themes among multiple user stories. In the case of Made in America waivers, stories around codes make up just part of the overall experience for the different audiences. Contracting officers also want to know where their requests are in the review process, MIAO reviewers have to manage multiple requests, federal contractors want actionable information, and so on.
A successful HCD strategy will take those themes and integrate them with the business goals of the organization. In this case, those goals are laid out in the executive order. This synthesis produces the core set of values that will shape the form of the final product:
The team created a public database that provided visibility for all waivers. This visibility extended throughout the entire application process, from submission, to review, to approval and even rejection.
Centralized information on past and pending waivers
It is critical that people have confidence that Made in America laws are operating as intended. People use this public database to see and judge for themselves the consistency and transparency of the decisions behind the application of those laws.
Increased consistency and transparency of waiver proposals
What’s more, the website provides U.S. producers and small businesses with valuable opportunities to supply goods and services to the federal government.
greater visibility of federal contracting opportunities
The Outcome
A high-level, blockframed map illustrating the journey for members of the public. Documents like this provided the foundation for a shared understanding among the team and the client and were a low-cost way to iterate on designs.
The final product is a simple one-page website that anticipates the particular needs of its different audiences and provides clear avenues to their resolution. It situates itself within the larger context of information gathering valued by federal contractors and contracting officers and provides a common ground for communication between these people and MIAO reviewers.