Last year, as I reached the end of my second decade in design and design leadership in the private sector, I realized I was ready for a major change in my career. In parts one and two of this three-part series, I shared some thoughts about why I made the move to civic tech after so many years in the private sector, and some key differences I observed in my first few months.
In this closing installment, I’d like to share insights from some of my talented colleagues at Coforma. We discuss why they transitioned from the private sector to the public sector, explore some of the challenges they faced, and learn how working in civic tech has changed their perspective on technology's role in bettering society.
Those who shared their experiences with me were:
Sabrina Fonseca (she/they), Principal Design Researcher; previous experience includes design agencies such as R/GA, Method, DellEMC, and Isobar
Fiorella Geedi (she/her), Product Designer; previous experience includes Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, nonprofits, and digital service agencies
David Koger (he/him), Group Product Manager; previous experience includes H&R Block, Whataburger, and USAA
Lauren S. (she/her), Senior Principal Design Researcher; previous experience includes Bank of America’s Global Information Security organization
Skyler Schain (he/him), Senior Product Designer; previous experience includes Google and tech startups
Ann Buechner (she/her), Director of Content Design; previous experience includes Shopify and several design agencies
Why did you decide to pursue work supporting the public sector?
Sabrina: Prior to Coforma, I worked at design agencies and most of my clients were in finance or enterprise software. There was a lot of really complex work that took a long time to understand, and I had a knack for it. I felt some of the solutions in finance were purposefully designed to be difficult to understand, so people didn't have direct access to financial education. I wanted to apply my expertise working on complex problems to something more meaningful that positively affected people. While I was doing freelance work, I got an opportunity to work with an organization focused on removing the barriers to naturalization for green card holders. That’s also a deeply complicated system and was the start of my transition into civic tech.
Fiorella: Even though I was working in healthcare just before joining Coforma, we didn't have much access to the actual users for the products we were working on after the initial discovery. For all the design work we were doing after discovery, we could only talk to insurance plan representatives. It was a barrier. And I thought, “I don't know if I'm making an impact here.” Then, I saw Eduardo [Ortiz, Coforma CEO] speak at a conference and started looking into all the work Coforma was doing in the public sector. I felt very connected to it.
I love how users are at the heart and center of all we do here at Coforma. The human-centered approach we use includes those impacted by the products and services we create throughout the entire design process. This approach closes the gap that I felt was missing.
David: After building treasury products for a bank, developing wealth management products for military members, and helping to create small business and investment-related tax products, I was looking for an opportunity to do more impactful work and to explore digital products from a holistic perspective for the end user. A lot of places throw technology at problems that lower income or minority or marginalized citizens face, and they don't take into account what those people's lives are actually like: What is access? What are the natural barriers that prevent them from utilizing those services? Finding Coforma was an “aha!” moment for me to realize that I can apply my skills to more meaningful work.
What challenges did you face transitioning to civic tech and what lessons did you learn?
Lauren: Getting alignment across the silos of these big government organizations can be a challenge. I hear people talking about “the right hand not talking to the left hand.” There isn’t always a cohesive glue between all the different people involved. Even knowing who owns something or is responsible for pieces of it can be difficult.
Tech debt is another barrier the private sector is a little better at addressing. For example, one agency I have worked with wants to operationalize an enterprise structure to track and understand their success, but there’s no data currently to support it because none of their systems have been set up to capture it.
Ann: One of the things I was surprised about coming into more government-focused work is the level of ambiguity that often exists within the work. It’s been important to be able to sit in the ambiguity, not get too overwhelmed by it, and then help people have the conversations to figure it out collectively. We're not here to just come in and move all the furniture and leave. We’re building these things together.
How were your existing skills transferable to the public sector?
Skyler: I think it's cool how much overlap there is between the type of work I was doing in the private sector and the type of work I'm doing now. In the government agency we’re working with, there’s a whole design system, a team that owns and operates that design system, and established agile ways of working. There are best practices just like you would find in the private sector. And although the day-to-day work is similar to what I was doing in the private sector, there’s more emphasis on designing for a broad swath of humanity coming from different backgrounds with different needs. The work is more focused on things like accessibility, which is a positive change.
Fiorella: My first time doing research was in the private sector. And I’m glad I was able to do it there, and in person. We went to different sites to observe our users interact with our application and complete activities with them. I've been able to leverage that experience on the different projects I have been a part of at Coforma.
I also started working on design systems when I was in private-sector healthcare. There was no design system for the product I worked on, so I helped establish one. That experience helped me support design system development work in partnership with a state government.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities within the public sector?
David: I think the biggest opportunity lies in helping our partners at the government level to be more long-term, strategic thinkers from a digital standpoint. The way contracts are written often blocks people into accomplishing singular goals without thinking through the long-term strategy for applications or processes. I see opportunity in influencing the way business owners on the government side think about digital products—helping them understand that when they ask for human-centered design, they’re asking for a living product, not a single-line deliverable.
Sabrina: Many people are talking about the importance of having more of a sense of design, or implementation, at the time when policy is being written. The kind of work we typically do is responding to policy that's already in place. And when we start actually designing the thing, it turns out that sometimes the way the law was written creates more administrative burdens. Our methods can help explore policy along with the digital solutions to support them. We can go upstream a bit more so we're not just responding to policy and having to work around it, but are actually shaping it.
How has working in civic tech changed your perspective on technology’s role in society?
Skyler: I've come to realize that when you're really solving problems and thinking about them holistically, you need to start with the "human in the loop" processes-not the website or applications. There’s a lot of human knowledge and human-based solutions that are probably under-resourced and could help with some of the things we're trying to solve digitally. I've been thinking a lot about striking that ideal balance. How do we advocate for both digital and non-digital solutions?
Lauren: Thinking that technology is the answer rather than a method of enacting something is losing the point. Many of these government services are inherently very human and catch people in vulnerable moments. When you don't reflect that, it's very dehumanizing and actually does the opposite of what we seek to do. Technology is a tool, and its strengths and benefits directly reflect the people, policies, organizational structures, and values behind it.
Ann: For me, to work in technology and design is to fundamentally be an optimist. What is the ultimate expression of optimism? To work in a civic tech space and help all people gain more access to the services they need. Working in this space has widened my perspective on what technology is for and who it is for, which is to say it should be for everyone.
After speaking with my colleagues about the wide-ranging experiences and paths that led them to positions in civic tech, I was struck by the commonalities that emerged. One of those is a deep-seated desire to do work that has a positive impact on others.
Another is an ability to embrace complexity, navigate through ambiguity, and even find similarities in work in both sectors. If reading this article or others in the series has piqued your interest in a possible career transition, here are some recommendations to learn more about working in civic tech:
Read some (or all!) of the many books suggested by the Civic Tech Book Club and join their discussion groups
Explore the member organizations of the global Code For All network
Follow Coforma on LinkedIn to read about our experiences as a digital services agency and review open positions on our Careers page