overview
During the year of 2020 a small team of us at the NYC Civic Service Design Studio redesigned the NYC Public Housing rent recertification process and ePortal for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and public housing New York City residents and staff.
about the project
Company: Mayor's Office For Economic Opportunity, Civic Service Design Studio
Client: New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)
Timeframe: January 2020 - June 2020 (6 months)
My role: Service Designer & Researcher
Approach
Goals
- To streamline the current rent recertification application process for residents, surfacing their concerns, alleviating burden and motivating a timely renewal.
- To provide housing staff with better support, tools and clarity needed to guide residents through rent recertification.
Details
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) reached out to the New York City Service Design Studio under the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity to improve their rent recertification process for almost 400,000 residents living in public housing. Our design team at the time investigated how the NYCHA self-service digital ePortal experience supports the rent recertification process, but also analyzed the entire ecosystem of frontline and administrative staff to identify more holistic ways to help residents and staff.
What I did: As service designer and UX researcher on a team of 3 my role included doing early generative and evaluative research, facilitating workshops, leveraging service design storytelling tools, and creating a streamline updated digital UX flow for NYCHA.
Generative Research
Discovery Workshop w/ Residents
1-on-1 User Interviews with Residents Leaders
1-on-1 User Interviews with Subject Matter Experts
Field Studies: Contextual Inquiry Interviews with Housing Staff
Developed Research Respository Database
Evaluative Research
Usability Audit (ePortal XP)
Final Outcomes
Findings & Insight Documentation (journey maps + personas)
Strategic Recommendations & Product Visions
Final UX Design Flows
high-level process
Before starting this project, myself, my project lead, and deputy director at the Civic Service Design Studio met with NYCHA’s leadership staff to identify an overall process to address their goals of improving the current rent recertification. The output of this kickoff meeting was translated into a MOU and high-level timeline to accomplish the research and design tasks. For the next 6 months we embarked on four key phases through iterative sprints: Discovery, Design (i.e defining), Test, and Deliver/Implement.
These phases included planning and conducting research, synthesizing takeaways into service design artifacts, building a new product vision, designing and testing an improved experiences, and working to handoff the project to NYCHA’s technical team for implementation.
methodologies
Generative Research
To kickoff the discovery phase, I recommended a selection mix method generative research studies based on the stakeholders and business goals. These methods included planning and conducting: 1-on-1 Interviews, journey mapping workshops, subject matter expert interviews with HQ staff from NYCHA and Community Based Housing Organizations, and onsite contextual inquiry interviews.
Planning and Recruitment
To develop a research protocol that focused on learning about the recertification experience from the staff and resident perspective we created a guide for each audience. We recruited from various different neighborhoods and housing developments, through paper handouts and word of mouth.
Research Implementation (25 Participants)
Resident Studies:
1-on-1 Interviews w/ Resident Leaders (2 Participants)
Journey Mapping Discovery Workshops (10 Participants)
Staff Studies
Contextual Inquiries w/ Housing Staff (8 Participants)
1-on-1 Interivews w/ HQ Staff (3 Participants)
SME Interviews w/ CBOs (2 Orgs)
Discovery workshop with participants
Participants at workshop
Walking through research card sorting with Staff
Synthesizing & Building a Repository
I built a synthesis framework for our research that utilized Miro and Airtable. A separate goal for the Civic Service Design Studio, with agreements with the agencies we worked with, was to create a government research qualitative repository for a variety of stakeholders. So I built a research repository and used the framework to identify how we should tag and distill key insights.
Final Storytelling Outputs
Resident + Housing Staff Archetypes
I synthesized our findings and insights from our conversations with residents, housing staff, and resident leaders into user archetypes to help stakeholders understand their audience; their needs, pain points and motivations.
Detailed Experience Journey Maps
I also documented the journey of residents and staff when completing an annual rent recertification application, from phases such as preparing to submit, completing the form, awaiting the results, supporting residents and processing their submitted forms.
In order to share the resident and staff journey we created a high-level journey map of their experiences illustrating how their relationship to one another.
insights to a product vision
Synthesis led to surfacing key insights and actionable improvements recommended to our NYCHA stakeholders for better a rent recertification experience for residents and staff.
"We were left behind in the transition to digital"
Residents dreaded the yearly task recertifying their income because the process felt unfamiliar, unfair and burdensome. Additionally residents didn't always have access to the ePortal or the skills needed to navigate it, many older residents struggle with fear of technology, understanding legalese, and the clunky web experience does not help.
"Thinking about money is stressful"
Unknown expense increases can trigger anxiety in cash-strapped residents. They are confused about how rent is calculated, further increasing uneasiness. Residents want transparency when it comes to how rent is calculated based on household income that is clear and digestible to read.
"We are stretched to thin"
Navigating the ePortal and corresponding technical difficulties are efficiency drainers, they deplete staff time and resident patience and decrease the likelihood of timely renewals. Housing Assistants are split between being a social worker, technologist and a landlord. They are trying to support and help residents complete the recertification process and address their complaints for a list of various other housing issues.
Recommended concepts
We recommended 3 areas in which the rent recertification process can be improved. After reviewing these directions with our NYCHA stakeholders our team focused on designing and implementing the vision for a technology solution that focused on a improving the digital user experience
applying the product vision
We strategized that NYCHA can build back trust by investing in an iterative User-centered ePortal Experience and Strategy. The ePortal is the most direct and consistent way residents and staff interact with NYCHA and learn public housing steps and policies.
Employing a Usability Audit & New User Flows
Through an initial audit of the current ePortal experience, I identified a need for key usability principles to implement such as: clear navigation, better plain language, a need for clear user control and freedom, UX consistency, simplified aesthetic and minimal design.
A new user flow was co-created by myself and project lead based on learnings from the usability audit, research findings and best practice inspiration.
Exploring a New UX Direction
After having a foundation of where we should improve the current experience, I started off looking at ways we can display progress trackers that don’t compete with site navigation and better orient the user to where they are in the application process. The orientation and the navigation was one area that created a lot of confusion for residents. I also explored ways to create a progressive form that engages the user but does not create the feeling of a long application process.
Final UX Designs
This is the final design direction. The designs below reflect the new web design system created by our visual designer and the UX flow interactions designed by myself.
Key tasks we focused on improving were the UX flow to add and edit household members and reporting income history.
impact & takeaways
Today the NYCHA ePortal site with the updated design system, improved web flow, and navigation is live (a public housing log-in is needed to see entire live update). One of the biggest impacts is having this improved digital experience accessibile to almost 400,000 residents across 302 development sites within the 5 new york city boroughs.
In addition to being able to impact so many public housing residents, some key learnings I took away were:
Improving inclusion and accessibility for users can come from implementing plain language and expanding accessibility standards into our design principles.
Building a co-design partnership between with users and companies can create a foundation where regular feedback loops become operationalized.
Understanding the wider ecosystem helps to identify the right stakeholder involvement at the right times in the process, greatly changing the outcome.