Improving Equity & Accessibility of the Unemployment Benefits System
PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH | CO-DESIGN | PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
As the accessibility & customer experience strategy lead, my team and I collaborated with the US Department of Labor to develop methods by which they can more effectively and equitably support individuals seeking unemployment benefits.
OPPORTUNITY
My role in this effort was to uncover where there are opportunities to improve the experience of those seeking unemployment benefits, and facilitate relationships between the state and federal stakeholders to ensure equitable systemic changes could be implemented with the support of both parties.
OUTCOME
While my team did produce the Equitable Access Toolkit for states to use as an internal resource to support the end users. I was also able to develop lasting relationships between key stakeholders across states, who were not previously communicating and sharing resources. The link to the final document and other resources can be found here: https://www.workforcegps.org/resources/2023/04/UI_Content/Public_Equitable_Access_Toolkit
Research & Development
The user research methods I leveraged largely included structured and semi-structured interviews, remote design workshops, contextual inquiry, and digital anthropology. It was important to get a holistic idea of how these systems worked from the perspective of both the customer and the service providers to see where and how experience failures were occurring. Service blueprints were leveraged to track both systemic failures and successes for the client and help guide us through the development of the Equitable Access Toolkit.
To ensure we could get the information and outcomes needed for an improved customer experience it was important to involve stakeholders and end users early in the process and facilitate collaboration; both for the purposes of my own research but also so that they might continue these types of productive and symbiotic relationships after the conclusion of this project.
