Rosenfeld Review Podcast

Meet Martha Dorris, Civic Design Co-curator

Martha Dorris, Founder and CEO, Dorris Consulting International, has almost 34 years of government experience in acquisition, technical and program management to customer experience. Martha has run many government organizations that build and deliver agency and citizen facing programs to deliver government services anytime, anywhere on any device.
Most recently, Martha led and managed GSA’s Office of Strategic Programs where she brought a customer-centric lens to the services and acquisitions they award. In this Rosenfeld Review episode, she takes a dive into her projects at the GSA improving Customer Experience (as opposed to the previous focus on Customer Service), as well as work across the government and her advice for anyone just starting out.
We are pleased that Martha is supporting the curation team for our new Civic Design conference and community, which will be launching soon with our first monthly videoconference. Sign up here to be notified: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/
Tickets to Civic Design 2021 are now available; register now! https://rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/

Meet Ariel Kennan, Civic Design Co-curator

Ariel Kennan is a service design and product development leader who has worked across the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. We are pleased to announce that she has joined the curation team of our new Civic Design conference and community, which will be launching soon with our first monthly videoconference. Sign up here to be notified: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/
In this Rosenfeld Review episode, Ariel discusses the myriad of public service projects she’s had a hand in, and particularly the ways in which Civic Design can improve peoples’ lives, especially those who are underprivileged (for example, the application for unemployment benefits during the covid-19 pandemic.)
Ariel recommends:
Creative Reaction Lab — building capacity in historically marginalized communities and training designers to work in new ways. https://www.creativereactionlab.com/

Meet Charlotte Lee, Civic Design Co-curator

We are excited to welcome Charlotte Lee as a co-curator of our new Civic Design conference and community, which will be launching soon with our first monthly videoconference. Sign up here to be notified: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/
In this episode, Charlotte and Lou discuss the intersection of design and technology, machine learning, how the House of Representatives legislates, and more. She also shares details about her current project, redesigning congress.gov, and a peek into what you can expect from the Civic Design Conference.
Looking for a great read? Charlotte recommends: Humanocracy https://www.humanocracy.com/ by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini
About Charlotte:
Charlotte Lee is an award-winning entrepreneur and human-centered design practitioner based in Washington D.C. She is the founder and CEO of Monday Design Company, a service design consultancy as well as Kastling Group, a digital transformation consultancy. She is a strategic advisor to public and private executives in organizations undergoing IT modernization. Many of her clients seek partnership to help execute their vision of a holistic view of transformation that places human achievement as the measure of success. Her professional path in product management and user experience design was taken with the vision of a more human-friendly world in every way. Charlotte’s current portfolio at the House of Representatives exemplifies her two biggest passions- human centricity and strengthening democracy. She is very energized by the opportunity to apply HCD and design thinking to examine and reimagine the way ideas turn into law.

Surveys That Work with Caroline Jarrett

Caroline’s book “Surveys That Work: A Practical Guide for Designing and Running Better Surveys” https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/surveys-that-work/ is a decade in the making — and finally coming in July 2021! Here, Caroline shares some glimpses into the methodologies and tricks she’ll share in the book, and how it evolved along the years.
Caroline recommends:
Mentor Black Business https://blackbusiness.mcsaatchi.com/ founded by Akil Benjamin
More about the book:
Surveys That Work explains a seven-step process for designing, running, and reporting on a survey that gets accurate results. In a no-nonsense style with plenty of examples about real-world compromises, the book focuses on reducing the errors that make up Total Survey Error—a key concept in survey methodology. If you are conducting a survey, this book is a must-have.

Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges with Surya Vanka

Surya Vanka, speaker at the upcoming Design at Scale conference, joins Lou to discuss “Design Swarms,” which he’ll also cover during his conference presentation. Surya shares his experiences working to solve major social problems like gender discrimination and the opioid crisis through design thinking exercises. He also discusses ways leaders can step back to create more value from the “swarm.”
Surya recommends:
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change by Victor Papanek https://www.amazon.com/Design-Real-World-Ecology-Social/dp/0897331532
About Surya’s talk at Design at Scale 2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/
Enterprises, even those with mature design practices, find it difficult to tap into the creativity of all of its workforce. Yet unleashing that broad creativity is now needed more than ever as success of teams depends on having the nimbleness of an ant farm to adapt and find their way around obstacles. Enterprise design processes, systems and ops are often tied to old top-down command/control organizational models. Design Swarms is an approach that has been used and adopted by teams within companies like Amazon, Amgen, Autodesk, Callison, Deutsche Bank, Lilly, T-Mobile, Microsoft, and REI to unleash swarm creativity at scale.
About Surya:
Surya Vanka is a transdisciplinary designer who has worked at the leading edge of physical and digital experiences. He is founder of Authentic Design, was president of the Seattle Design Festival, chair of Interaction Week 2019 and chair of 50th anniversary International Design Conference of IDSA. Surya was director of user experience at Microsoft, a tenured professor of design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study. He is creator of Design Swarms method, a light weight design technique used in business, non-profit and education worldwide. Surya won the Microsoft Engineering Best Practice Awards twice, Ohio State University 50th Anniversary Distinguished Design Alumnus Award, Microsoft Achievement Award, Accessibility Achievement Award, World Brand Congress Leadership Award and several other industry recognitions. He has been consultant to companies like Amazon, Amgen, Autodesk, Callison, Lilly, Microsoft and REI. He frequently keynotes speeches at the most prestigious conferences and has won top speaker awards three times. His work has appeared in numerous publications and news programs, including TEDx, Form, I.D., Design Council, WIRED, Interactions, the BBC and National Public Radio. Surya is the author of two books on design, several publications, and has taught design on every continent but Antarctica.

“Could you make it worse?” Redesigning HealthCare.gov

A self-described “failed architect,” Sha Hwang joins Lou to discuss the challenges of scale when merging two companies, and his journey from Trulia and Stamen Design to being part of the team that rescued Healthcare.gov and, subsequently, founding Nava, a public benefit corporation formed during those efforts.
Sha Recommends:
• Civic Technologists Practice Guide https://www.amazon.com/Civic-Technologists-Practice-Guide/dp/1735286508
Sha will be speaking at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/sessions/the-lost-year/
About Sha’s talk, The Lost Year: The pandemic made it painfully clear that the failure of critical public services causes real harm, both physical and financial. Our healthcare system is being overwhelmed, millions are pouring onto unemployment, and we’ve seen an unprecedented number of people trying to access government programs. It has never been more important for government services to be simple, effective, and accessible to all, yet we’re far from that vision today. In this talk, Sha Hwang, co-founder and chief operating officer of Nava Public Benefit Corporation, will discuss the opportunities designers have to build government services that prioritize equity and resiliency—and the responsibility that comes with designing systems that serve millions of people.
About Sha:
Sha Hwang is the COO and co-founder of Nava, a public benefit corporation formed during efforts to help fix HealthCare.gov. Nava partners with government agencies to improve critical public services, and now works across several projects in the US on programs including Medicare, Veterans Affairs, and unemployment benefits and paid family leave at the state level. Nava has helped tens of millions of people enroll in critical programs, streamlined processes to save decades of labor years, and saved government agencies hundreds of millions of dollars. A failed architect and accidental entrepreneur, Sha has worked with clients such as the New York Times, the Harvard Library Lab, MTV, Flickr, and Adobe. Previously, Sha worked at Stamen Design and later cofounded the company Movity, which was acquired by Trulia.

“Accessibility is the Oil Change” with Sheri Byrne-Haber

Sheri is the author of the upcoming book Giving a Damn about Accessibility, and a speaker at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. In this latest Rosenfeld Review podcast, she discusses the critical importance of starting projects and products with a mindset of accessibility. Spoiler alert: it’s far more difficult to go back later.
VMWare, where Sheri is currently an Accessibility Architect, recently launched an Accessibility Champions program, increasing their hires with disabilities and those with interest in specialized training. She and Lou talk through the program and other ways you can scale accessibility—even while acquiring new companies, as Sheri has experienced (more than ten in two years!)
Interested in learning more? Check out Sheri’s presentation at DAS2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/sessions/accessibility-at-scale/
Sheri recommends:
Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School https://habengirma.com/
Lily Zheng, DEI Consultant https://lilyzheng.co/
Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global subject matter expert in the fields of disability and accessibility. She is best known for launching digital accessibility programs at multiple Fortune 200 companies, including McDonald’s, Albertsons, and VMware, as well as consulting on government and education accessibility.
Sheri’s award-winning Medium blog summarizes legal cases and issues facing people implementing accessibility programs, with over 300,000 readers since its launch. Sheri is a frequent panelist and speaker at accessibility related conferences and an active member of several accessibility committees and non-profits, helping drive and communicate the evolution of accessibility standards.

Peter Merholz: Design at Scale is People!

Design at scale is perhaps the most interesting challenge facing the design industry right now. How do you maintain quality and not get bogged down as your team grows? Much of the discussion focuses on systems and processes, but that starting with systems runs exactly contrary to the true value that design brings to companies, which is a humanistic and creative problem-framing and problem-solving approach. In other words, this focus on systems could ironically undercut design’s potential within organizations— in other words, “Design at Scale” is humanism at scale, and share what’s needed to keep people at the center of this work.
Peter Merholz will be both a speaker and a workshop instructor during this year’s Design at Scale conference! Here, Lou and Peter muse over stories from the early days of information architecture before meandering their way to contrasting UX in the public versus private sectors. They also discuss a preview of Peter’s talk at the conference, Design at Scale is People!
More about Peter’s workshop, Design Your Design Organization: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/cohorts/design-your-design-organization/
Peter recommends: HmntyCntrd https://hmntycntrd.com/
More about Peter
Peter Merholz has been active in digital design and product for 25 years, most notably in building premier user experience consultancy Adaptive Path, and now advising teams on design organizations and leadership. Recent clients include The New York Times, Wells Fargo Bank, Cloudflare, and Zendesk. He co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs (O’Reilly), the first book focused on the organizational, managerial, and operational challenges of building in-house design teams. https://www.petermerholz.com/about-peter/