How to Design for Civic Life
Civic design identifies and fills gaps at the intersection of people and policy. It starts from skills in research, plain language, accessibility, interaction, service, and information design and uses them to make the government responsive and invite participation from everyone.
Whitney Quesenbery, Director of the Center for Civic Design, will look at what we can learn from civic design and how we can apply it to any form of user experience.
In this 1-hour Master Class, you’ll learn:
- Why “democracy is a design problem” and what one looks like in the real world and in analytics.
- How to create content for humans–and meet the challenge of reading and civic literacy gaps and structure information in bites, snacks, and meals.
- Ways to use visual presentation to make complex information approachable.
- How to design micro-journeys to make every interaction an invitation to participation.
- How user research and design can shape the implementation of policy.
Whether you are interested in working in government, civic tech, civil reform or you are just curious about what it means to think about democracy as a design problem, this Master Class is for you.
You’ll leave with insights on the differences and similarities between commercial and policy-focused design that you can use to make your own work reach a broader audience.
Speaker
Whitney is the co-founder and executive director of the Center for Civic Design. CCD is a nonprofit design and research organization whose motto and mission is that 'democracy is a design problem”. They work with election offices and advocacy groups across the country to improve the voter experience make it easier for more people to participate in elections.
She brings to her work in civic design her UX research fascination with people and an obsession to communicate clearly with her goal of applying user research insights to design products where people matter. She has written three books on the subject, A Web for Everyone, Storytelling for User Experience, and Global UX: Design and Research in a Connected World.
Before she was seduced by a little beige computer into software, usability, and interface design, Whitney was a theatrical lighting designer on and off Broadway. Through all of her work, Whitney helps UX practitioners keep users in mind throughout the creative process.
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