Rosenverse
Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement

Gold
Thursday, December 9, 2021 • Civic Design 2021
Share the love for this talk
Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement
Speakers: Irina Tikhonova and Kari Dietrich
Link:

Summary

Through Open Cities, Granicus was able to expand on our ability to provide resident-centered digital experiences in local governments around the world. Our platform is the public sector's leading digital customer journey platform that has helped thousands of local governments transform their websites, digital forms, and service delivery experiences. Join Irina Tikhonova and Kari Dietrich in this session focused on the importance of starting small when elevating user experiences. We discuss how to focus on user journeys, involve the right stakeholders, and push for data-driven and human-centered policy changes.

Key Insights

  • Starting with small targeted digital pilots can generate large savings and efficiency gains in local government services.

  • Grand Rapids’ 311 service redesign reduced walk-ins by 79% and saved $200,000 in staff costs within six weeks.

  • Granicus platform offers a modular, ‘Lego-block’ approach allowing government clients to build tailored user experiences.

  • Combining technology with consulting services around data, personas, and user journeys improves digital transformation outcomes.

  • Real user testing with diverse populations reveals deeper insights than relying solely on personas or anecdotal data.

  • In Wyandotte County, policies created services that were not equitable, especially for those without legal representation.

  • Iterative, user-centered design processes with hybrid content management help improve government website content consistency.

  • Resistance to change inside government is common and requires persistent champions like Becky Joglover to overcome.

  • Digital services designed for the most marginalized users tend to improve usability for the entire resident population.

  • Government websites should act as online government itself, not just provide information about government.

Notable Quotes

"Big projects tend to get out of hand and scare stakeholders, so starting small is key to scaling impact."

"Granicus is like Lego blocks — you can create any type of engagement and experience you want."

"Majority of users relied heavily on Google to find government services rather than navigating the site itself."

"84% of website contributors didn’t know their own top pages or important analytics."

"Digital transformation can be slowed down by leadership resistance and a desire for gradual change."

"If you fix the problems for marginalized communities, you really fix them for everyone."

"People just wanted to get in, get what they needed, and get out without figuring out government operations."

"Websites and digital spaces should be government, not just provide information about government."

"You never get all your usability testers to respond, you always need to recruit more than you think."

"Employees creating content improved rapidly when centralized guidelines and editing were applied."

Ask the Rosenbot
Kit Unger
Theme 3 Intro
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Heidi Trost
To Protect People, You Have to Protect Information: A Human-Centered Design Approach to Cybersecurity
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Nathan Curtis
Design Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
2019 • DesignOps Community
Russell Blair
Killing the blank page
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Jeff Sussna
What DesignOps Can Learn From DevOps
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Alison Rand
Scaling Impact with Service Design
2021 • DesignOps Community
B. Pagels-Minor
Breaking the Tension: The Power of Enabling Your Employees to Show Up Authentically
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Sarah Auslander
Incremental Steps to Drive Radical Innovation in Policy Design
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Discussion
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Brad Peters
Short Take #1: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Silke Bochat
5 Antifragile Strategies for a DesignOps 2.0
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Design Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Digital Medicine Design
2019 • Enterprise Community
Jemma Ahmed
Theme 2 Intro
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Lavy Kumar

"Bringing tasks directly into meetings lets you work where collaboration is happening without jumping between tools."

Lavy Kumar Kat Temple Shan Sebastian Tara Jensen Jenn Chou

Future of Work

June 9, 2021

Andreas Huebner

"Our user base is really fun and complex, with different preferences that require nuanced automation approaches."

Andreas Huebner Amy Takata Craig Brookes

What Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?

March 11, 2021

Ricardo Martins

"Conjoint analysis reveals how consumers make choices by examining trade-offs they are willing to make."

Ricardo Martins

Unlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods

March 12, 2025

Monty Hammontree

"Satya Nadella’s leadership feels authentic—he puts empathy at the center of everything he does."

Monty Hammontree

The Future of UX Research

December 3, 2020

Benjamin Real

"Losing design ops led to missed deadlines, bad experiences for customers, and overstretched design leaders."

Benjamin Real

Showing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team

October 21, 2020

Kate Towsey

"You can own the infrastructure that allows knowledge to flow but you can't actually own the knowledge itself."

Kate Towsey

Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey

April 2, 2025

Steve Portigal

"The weakest insight method might win simply because of the relationship to the power structure."

Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian Rohrer

Discussion

May 13, 2015

Sam Proulx

"Offering the ability to save your progress allows users with disabilities to complete tasks on their own time."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

March 28, 2023

Sam Proulx

"Consistency between control labels and prototype instructions matters a lot, because mismatches can cause big problems for alternative navigation."

Sam Proulx

Prototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You

October 1, 2021