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Welcome!

This repo is where we document our work providing consulting in Human Centered Design to The US National Forest Service’s Division of Natural Resource Management.

This engagement grew out of 18F’s longer term engagement with the Forest Service on the ePermits platform.

This engagement began in September 2017, and grew out of 18F’s work with the Forest Service on the ePermits platform. In efforts to scale human centered design within their organization, the Forest Service identified champions to receive training in human centered design and design research. The goal is to improve the usability of NRM’s systems and programs while motivating USFS staff to practice human centered design and agile development.

Transforming the way the Forest Service buys, builds, and modernizes its systems and services requires a multi-faceted approach. To this end, 18F has been engaging with all levels of the organization at NRM. We’ve focused on (1) building the internal capacity to apply human centered design and agile software development methods by delivering training and 1:1 coaching to individual Project and Portfolio Managers, and (2) removing organizational and cultural barriers to incorporating these practices by engaging with NRM leadership via regular workshops and briefings.

Overarching hypothesis

This project is in itself an experiment. We began by setting out to test the following idea:

We believe that coaching and elevating agile, human-centered design champions in NRM staff will result in systems that better work for users. We'll know we're right when we see systems involved improve self-defined customer service metrics.

Principles

As we carry out this project together, we value:

• Teaching others over just doing. This effort should build skills amongst Forest Service staff, not do the work for them.
• Targeting the “early adopters” over being everything to everyone. Instead of trying to teach everyone a little, let’s try to teach a few people a lot. And let’s focus on the people who are most likely to learn and use what we’re teaching.
• Learning about users over generating deliverables. Although we will generate documentation, the purpose of our work is teaching people to learn about their system’s users, not generate documentations.
• Working in quick iterations, even on research and design. Although we won’t be building software, we’ll take our cue from agile development and continue to do our work in iterations or “sprints.” Each sprint should deliver value and build upon the previous sprint.