Summary
The speaker describes their role working for the New York City government and the transformative work done on Homestat, a program introduced by Mayor de Blasio in 2016 to address street homelessness. They emphasized the importance of empathy and dignity in service design, detailing their process of conducting field research with outreach teams and homeless residents, including those struggling with mental illness and substance use. With input from stakeholders across policy, management, and frontline services, they created detailed journey maps—from initial sticky-note versions to comprehensive digital documents—that unveiled the complexity of the service. A pivotal workshop brought everyone together to reflect and improve the shared understanding, leading to valuable design insights. These efforts influenced the design of public-facing dashboards, a new case management system built on trust and collaboration, and even a city-wide homelessness policy report called Turning the Tide. The team also supports cross-agency case conferences to foster coordination. Beyond homelessness, their small design team is building capacity across NYC's vast government structure of 325,000 public servants and 70+ agencies by creating design toolkits, training public servants, and partnering with private design firms. The speaker stresses setting a clear mission, principles, tactics, and goals to embed design culture in government, demonstrating direct impact by moving 690 people into housing through Homestat last year.
Key Insights
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Building trust takes hundreds of repeated contacts with vulnerable homeless individuals before they accept help.
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Empathy and dignity can be introduced into large government services by actively involving frontline workers and clients in research.
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Journey mapping complex public services reveals the many steps and people involved, helping break down silos across agencies.
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Digital journey maps increase accessibility and sharing among distributed teams compared to sticky notes.
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Hosting inclusive workshops enables diverse stakeholders to build a shared understanding and identify gaps and improvements.
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Design-led research can directly inform technology development such as public dashboards and case management systems.
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Strong relationships and trust between design teams and service providers ease technology adoption and empower providers.
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Embedding design in policy documents can amplify clients’ voices and guide comprehensive program reform.
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Scaling design culture in a large city government requires clear mission, principles, tactics, toolkits, and measurable goals.
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Collaborating with private sector design firms while coaching agency staff reduces risk and accelerates design adoption.
Notable Quotes
"It can take hundreds of these contacts before they start to trust."
"We must put our citizens at the center of every service."
"People didn't understand the service end to end. They were experts at their piece of the service."
"Sticky notes are really hard to share across offices and locations."
"This was a transformational day where everyone got to join together and reflect."
"The relationship has changed the dynamic. Technology isn’t just shoved at them anymore."
"I found myself tearing up. It was the voices of the many people we had talked to come to life in this official policy document."
"We still participate in co-chipping particular moments but mostly we have handed off the project to colleagues."
"We’re only going to be able to do so many things. We have to start spreading our methods and mindsets."
"What is your design mission? What are the principles? What are the tactics and tools? What are the goals?"
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