Passport Services
Digital Transformation
Overview
Working on a large-scale and fully integrated customer experience team under the Department of State, the 1d project focused on improving the entire passport experience for a fully transformed digital application for the Department of State to adapt.
Working with a partner team leading the build of this new service, 1d’s goal was to unearth any and all customer facing barriers with the current passport application experience, which currently exists mostly in person, and revamp the process as a digital first task.
Role
Lead Designer
Lead Researcher
High Level Goals
The goal of this contract was two fold.
First to understand, from a high level all the way down to specific detail, what applicants thought of the current Passport application experience.
Second, with that foundational knowledge rooted in customer needs, to design a service that would allow current and future applicants a completely digital option for first time Passport applications.
I was able to create not just an assumed ideal service for customers, but to unpack real applicant concerns and design around their needs, putting applicants directly at the center of the solution.
Process at a Glance
Discovery
Stakeholder Engagement
Process and Solution Mapping Iteration
Desk Research
Analytics and Data Insights
Research Strategy
Research Planning
Customer Interview Planning
Customer Interview Materials
Design
Research Stimuli and Concept Design
Design Iterations and Final Concepts
Interviews
Customer Interviews
Synthesis
Rolling Synthesis
Complete Synthesis
Final Insights
Partner Faciliation Workshop
Generative and Prioritization Partner Workshop
Partner Async Activity
Wrap Up
Lessons Learned
Impact
Discovery
Stakeholder engagement
To begin project planning and requirements gathering, the first step was to engage with partners and access the work that has been completed so far on the applicant journey.
Facilitating a knowledge gathering session with the partner team allowed for alignment, engagement and overall comprehension of the barriers that they were facing on kicking off this transformation project.
Discovery
Process and Solution Mapping Iteration
While holding discovery calls with partners, an initial walk through of a solution was proposed to redefine the passport application experience for first time passport holders.
The focus of this solution flow was customer facing, and the first thing that stood out was the amount of assumptions that were baked into the process, and how those assumptions were the foundation for the suggested digital experience for customers.
By first reviewing the flow, then posing important questions, adding human centered design best practices, and overall UX and CX considerations, the solution flow became a living document to communicate how to best shape the work moving forward.
What did we know? What were we still curious about? Where were these proposed actions and ideas coming from?
Partner Process Map Before Review
Annotated Partner Process Map
Partner Q & A Board
Discovery
Desk Research
While working through conversations with partners, I also started to conduct desk research, in order to better align myself with the current Passport application process, and to ensure that the solutions that were started to come to light matched the issues that currently affected over 20 million Americans every year.
By understanding the current issues and customer barriers and, in tandem, bringing in partner ideas and concerns to the surface of the current experience, I was able to understand the broader landscape to start to identify the best outcomes for Passport applicants.
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Dialing into customer desk research, a particular area of interest that surfaced was digital literacy among current and future Passport applicants.
Understanding the customer comfortability level with digital products and services helped to further understand what digital transformation could and should do for customers.
Desk Research Board (Digital Literacy)
Customer Desk Research Board
Discovery
Analytics and Data Insights
Once desk research was compiled and clear themes began to emerge on what was already known about Passport applicants and their behaviors, I decided to flesh out the discovery research even further.
I began to examine Google Analytics, and used real customer data touchpoints to further understand customer behaviors. By examining and synthesizing existing Google Analytics reports and dashboards, I was able to better understand where in the current application process customers fell off, as well as where and how they were starting their passport application journey.
By teasing out clear data insights based on GA data, I was able to understand customer types and habits on a broader level, which would help shape the next phase of work in this project, customer research planning.
Data Insight Workspace (Google Analytrics)
Formalized Data Insights Statements
Research Strategy
Research Planning
Now that the discovery research phase of the project was wrapped up, it was time to get into the heavy research work that 1d required.
Because this project was focused on digital transformation, and the current experiences and processes were all mostly completed in person, there needed to be a focus on customer research, more importantly, customer interviews, to validate or support assumptions based on stakeholder opinions and data points. ​​
Research Plan Draft
Research Strategy
Customer Interview Planning
Once the research plan had been approved, I next focused on how best to think through customer research planning. The idea was to lead customers through a series of semi structured, fully moderated interview sessions. To get the most out of the short, hour-long sessions, I made the decision to plan for an interview that would be evenly and decidedly split into two parts.
The first part of the interview would focus on the current Passport experience, a list of actions that applicants might be familiar with, background questions, and scenarios that would get them thinking about their past or current experiences when applying for a U.S adult passport.
The second part of the interview would shift into the ideal future state of the passport application experience.
What would they like to see?
What would lift or ease some of the barriers they currently faced when applying for a passport and completing part of their application in person at a post office or a passport acceptance facility?
Customer Interview Ideation and Planning
Research Strategy
Customer Interview Materials
Before beginning customer research sessions, I spearheaded drafting all customer research materials needed to set the 1d team up for success, as well as leading team dynamics and roles within the research team.
To start, a moderator guide was drafted and finalized. While these interview sessions were semi structured, there were still a series of general questions that we aimed to ask participants, based on stakeholder goals and rooted in the discovery research that was conducted.
Moderator Guide Snapshot
Once the moderator guide was finalized, I created a participant tracker, to provide the entire team transparency and to streamline the remote interview process. This allowed for a smooth interview practice in general, and also assisted the interview coordinator with a way to track and manage participant communications, and keep the team informed.
As a last step in creating and implementing customer research materials, I created a note taking space that allowed for easy and clear note taking through the session. I made sure to design to include the moderator guide, to allow easy note taking, even if research team members were not used to note taking.
I used a color key that allowed each section of the moderator guide to stand on its own, creating a chronological note taking process for the entire 1d team. Designing an intuitive note taking space was key to ensuring that customer interview sessions were documented thoroughly and provided a structure that decreased cleaning notes.
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This note taking template was also adopted by other teams within the larger CX program as a research best practice.
Interview Note Taking Space
Design
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​Research Stimuli and Concept Design
Now that all of the customer interview materials had been created, the design ideation could really take place.
Because these designs were going to be used as a concept, a way to showcase to customers during interview sessions what an ideal future state might look like, its fidelity was pretty low, and they were still mockups that moderators would walk interview participants through verbally as a way to showcase what the intended actions would be.
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Design Call Outs
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The designs were meant to be snapshots of how they might complete the passport application process, so these designs were to be used to track understanding and usability
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The design flow was a truncated version of the proposed experience, due to the timing of the interviews
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The scope of this particular contract was solely to understand and identity key areas that applicants might struggle with during the entire application process, and propose ways to solve those barriers
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Certain screens were developed out more to gage explicit reactions from participants within key areas and functions of the proposed concepts
Concept Design Ideation Space
Design
Design Iterations and Final Concepts ​
Once I finalized the concept designs, I then presented them to our partner team in the form of a detailed design walkthrough.
Listening to stakeholders, and further revising these low weight designs was a way to ensure that our team was aligning with stakeholder needs, making the most out of limited time with participants during sessions, and uncovering answers in real time from customers that the stakeholders were still curious to learn.
Using a design walkthrough as a way to present a standalone design, repurpose that design as research stimuli, and a stakeholder communication tool allowed for streamlined outcomes during live research sessions. Using this type of low stakes concepts also assisted the thinking during the research teams' next step as they began to sense make.
Concept Design V1
Concept Design V2
Concept Design V3
Concept Design V4
Final Concept Design
Interviews
Customer Interviews
Finally, the team began to conduct customer interview sessions, using everything that was created and prepared in the previous weeks.
The research team conducted nine, hour long, moderator customer interviews, with a moderator, a note taker and an observer as research team roles. I acted as both moderator and note taker, but mostly moderated over half of these research sessions.
Following the note taking template, our team was able to keep track of interviews, identify which interview session notes had been cleaned, and keep an eye out on emerging themes that were starting to show through within the design used as the research stimuli.
Customer Interview Notes
Synthesis
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Rolling Synthesis
While the research team had a solid comprehensive synthesis strategy and plan that we’ll go over in detail, we also made the decision to allow for rolling synthesis.
This choice helped our team stay organized and start to lay the foundation for complete synthesis while still being able to stay on top of interview sessions and note taking.
Example of Debrief Space Being Uses for Rolling Synthesis
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Complete Synthesis
I took the lead on synthesis strategy, and the ideation and structure of the way that our team would do this work took shape before the interviews were completed. In this way, framing the work before we actually got started really helped align and ensure that synthesis was able to be done async.
Synthesis Quick Guide
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Clean interview notes from all sessions
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Transfer cleaned notes to their respective spaces on the complete synthesis board
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Rough grouping and quick themes
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Strengthening and Forming Insights
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Final Insights and Report Writing
By following the above synthesis guide in detail, our team was able to quickly and confidently delegate the synthesis work. More importantly, we were also able to formulate strong and complete insights to share with our partners.
Once synthesis was completed, a formal research report was outlined and populated using the synthesis board by pulling and plugging in insights to showcase the depth of work the research team completed during this round of customer research.
The synthesis board and strategy was also adopted across different CX teams contract wide and used in various other research focused projects.
Customer Synthesis Board
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Final Insights
By using the synthesis format and strategy, the research team compiled a list of 11 high impact insights to share out with our partner team.
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The final insights were than taken directly from the board below and plugged into a formal research report.
Final Insight Panel
Partner Workshop Faciliation
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Generative and Prioritization Partner Workshop
Once all of the insights were finalized and the research report wrapped up, the team wanted to have another opportunity to further engage with our partners. In other words, what could we do to allow our research work and insights to really drive the passport transformation project further?
After brainstorming a bunch of different ideas, we decided to facilitate a workshop with our partners, to ensure that our insights were not just shared with our partners but that we were able to continue to move the project forward in a meaningful way while still presenting the huge amount of research work we just wrapped up.
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We decided to host a workshop where we shared our final insights with our partners once again and allowed the partners themselves to propose solutions based on our customer insights. While our team had thoughts of our own, we wanted to open up the conversation and understand what our partners were most interested in exploring and why.
We framed this workshop by generating How Might We Statement for each insight that was already presented to the partners, and then asked them to think through answers and solutions to the generated HMW statements.
By doing this we not only opened up the conversations to our stakeholders, but we also really got a chance to spend most of the time generating with them, allowing all of the research to be able to be a through line for thinking through what could be feasible, and what mattered the most to them.
Pre Populated Workshop Board
Populated Workshop Board
Partner Async Activity
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While the workshop with the partners was very successful, we were also only able to meet the partner team for an hour.
Because we ran a two part workshop, there was not a lot of time left over for the prioritization piece. Rather than attempting to schedule yet another workshop with partners, I weighed the options with the rest of my team and thought that the best way to move forward would be to provide the partner team with an async activity.
Partner Async Board
Creating this sort of next step board as a hand out after the workshop was a way to document what the discussion has focused most upon, and allowed for a look into what was generated overall. It gave our partners a chance to really focus on what everyone on the team had generated, and begin to have internal conversations about what mattered most for the work moving forward.
Wrap Up
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Lessons Learned
Remaining the passport experience for customers was no small task. Several learning moments occurred throughout the course of this project. Having pre determined strategies in place for async synthesis, providing documentation through each phase of research and concept design, bringing in partners early and often throughout the work, and using customer insights as a way to solution rather than assume all proved to be direct links to the project's success.
By conducting customer research that was two fold, creating strong strategies before the work started, using rough design concepts as a way to better understand customer needs, bringing partners into the work, I was able to wrap up the contract by providing real and lasting solutions to enhance the current and future passport experience for the customer.
Impact
The ending of the contract, and the overall impact of the work was simple. Partner teams now had a heap of solutions, focusing on the digital adoption of passport services grounded in customer insights, and ideas to push the work forward, long after our team was gone.
In government contract work, there is not always a traditional finished product, but rather a package of materials that can be used in the future, as was the case with 1d.
Yes, there were design flows, a final research report, and proposed solutions to reinvent the entire passport application process from start to finish. However, the real influence of the work that I led throughout this contract was a new way to examine how we go about tackling the public facing customer experience for a long outdated process that affects millions of Americans everyday.