This portfolio is designed to provide quick snapshots of work upfront, followed by longer summaries of projects. Finally, a full project overview is provided at the end. For more information, please contact me at franklun@gmail.com or 313-590-7653.
As design researchers, we use countless methods in our projects. Here are snapshots of the ones I’m most proud of from the last 12 years working for Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and local, state, and federal government.
Method: Participant observation
Project: in an exceptional case of extreme participant observation, I designed a costume in order to blend into a rally of anti gay marriage protesters in front of the US Supreme Court in 2013. Blending in allowed me to research the motivations and fears driving these protesters.
Outcome: the Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City used my research to create a communications campaign advocating for samesex marriage.
Method: Usability testing
Project: when redesigning the procurement system for Detroit Public Schools Community District, we needed to test a wide range of prototype apps, ordering systems, and other communication tools.
Outcome: usability testing revealed that staff in the distract didn’t need a new app, but rather an easy-to-use map that showed the process as it currently worked. This saved the district thousands of dollars.
Method: KJ (silent decision-making)
Project: the Pennsylvania State Licensing System website needed a drastic overhaul. In order to design a usability test for the website, I facilitated a KJ method in order for staff to decide what they wanted to learn from the testing.
Outcome: state staff were able to co-design the moderator guide for the usability testing of their own site. Because they were included in the process from start to finish, they were bought into the results and recommendations for improving the site.
Other methods I’m especially excited about include facilitation and workshop design, participant observation, prototyping, role-playing, stakeholder mapping, user journey mapping, and usability testing. My experience includes both doing and teaching these methods.
Method: Surveys
Project: in order to measure customer experience (CX) skills at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we designed a series of prompts that sub-agencies responded to. Prompts included questions like “I have ongoing, structured conversations with people who use our service.”
Outcome: by reviewing responses from all subagencies across DHS, we were able to create heat maps that showed what the agency’s strongest and weakest CX skills were. These readings were used to advocate for funding, design training, and write strategic plans.
New remote federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security had problems receiving and setting up their IT equipment. IT service teams had varied understandings of what the problem was.
Project medium: service redesign
How: Myself and one other researcher performed 10 user interviews with hiring managers and new employees to understand their experience on the front and back end of their on-boarding experience. Then, we created a journey map that merged the two.
Outcome: co-creating a journey map with IT staff revealed numerous loop holes and hand offs that weren’t made, causing issues such as delays in shipments and mistakes in communication. These outcomes impacted over 1,400 new hires in one year alone. Additionally, because we designed and executed the interviews with IT staff, they bought into the outcomes. They also now do their own interviews with random new hires to continue their learning.
Challenge I overcame: IT staff didn’t think they had any problems, and were defensive against needing to improve their process. By including them in the user interviews and teaching them how to create a journey map, they uncovered their own problems.
“My laptop was shipped to an old address. I had no idea it was coming.” New hire
“I don’t receive confirmation that equipment is ready or received. I assume employees receive it.” IT staff
IT staff had numerous Vizio diagrams and SOPs, but had never compiled everything into one timeline. Mapping the new employee experience along this timeline revealed opportunities for service improvement.
PALS is an essential government website used by everyone from cosmetologists to morticians who need to obtain their professional licenses. Unfortunately state staff who operated the site were knee-high in complaints regarding the website’s problems. Project medium: website
How: Myself and 1 other researcher led state staff through a KJ to determine what they wanted to include in a moderator guide for their usability testing. Then, we trained the staff to do the testing themselves.
Outcome: three main areas: instructions, design, and tech support emerged as focus areas for redesign. Using results from our testing, we created mock-ups for the redesign of the PALS site. The state implemented almost all of our recommendations because they were included in the process.
Challenge I overcame: we had to find a way to make sure leadership supported their staff in implementing the changes after we left. Leadership saw their own staff facilitating usability tests, and vocalized that they empowered staff to implement changes based on what they learned.
A KJ was the perfect tool for managing countless opinions for what needed to be redesigned. This way, we could narrow a focus for our work.
Top: deciding together what questions to ask in our moderator guide.
Bottom: setup for participants during usability testing so that leadership could observe.
Among many insights from participants, many expressed that they didn’t know what documents they needed before completing the application. Creating an application timeline and checklist helped.
The passing of a Proposition in 2018 required the formation of a citizen-led redistricting commission. Michigan residents needed to know how they could get involved and what the Project medium: paper mailings, form, and online application
How: I designed prototype application materials and performed usability testing at libraries across the state with over 40 participants.
Outcome: an easy-to-read booklet and online application walks applicants through the process to be on the commission. Nearly 10,000 Michgan citizens applied from all 83 counties in the state.
Challenge I overcame: quickly understanding a highly complicated state law; then, translating it into prototypes and tools we could use in usability testing.
Initial application text from the Secretary of State included little hierarchy and was hard to read.
The new application was so successful that people who received it in the mail took time to write back, saying how excited they were.
Top: insights from usability testing fed into the design of an online application.
Bottom: we trained Michigan Secretary of State staff to do their own usability testing along with us.
Layers of complicated voting information forced users to open multiple tabs, PDFs, and scroll through long paragraphs of dense text in order to find simple information on the Michigan Secretary of State website. Local advocates wanted to help design better communication.
Project medium: website, paper booklet
How: Along with one co-facilitator, I lead local voting advocacy groups and state officials through many rounds of usability testing and card sorting in order to create web and print prototypes that we tested again.
Outcome: a redesigned Michigan Secretary of State voting website used by 7.2 million voters across the state. Thousands of voter guides, aligned to this website, were distributed to groups in the Detroit metro area.
Challenge I overcame: state of Michigan staff and local advocacy organizations didn’t collaborate. Facilitating a workshop that allowed them to agree on common issues meant that statewide communication would mirror what local advocates were saying, too.
Local advocates did their own testing on an old voter guide to determine what was unclear or missing.
Years of misaligned processes and systems led to confusion when purchasing items for vendors, principals, teachers, and central office staff. Nobody actually knew what the actual process looked like. Project medium: paper map; training
How: Interviewing 20 key stakeholders and running co-creation design workshops allowed users to collaboratively map processes and agree on key messaging for principals.
Outcome: A map that used a metaphor of a subway conveyed the steps to purchase goods and services. Three lines in three colors conveyed varying lengths of time required, while key messages appear in callout boxes. Stories collected from interviews became scenarios that were used for newly designed training experiences at 108 schools across the District
Challenge I overcame: leadership wanted to design an app or find a new expensive vendor. User research showed that for now, staff just wanted a clear map to navigate the complex system.
Do you expect that the good or service you are looking for will cost less than $23,881? (state minimum bid threshold)
Is
Approvals
StaceyReiner,anewteacher atanelementaryschoolonthe eastside,wasveryexcited. For heroutdoorsciencelab,she hadsourcedanentirekitthat wouldprovideherstudents withallthetoolstheyneeded torecordobservationsand performexperimentsoutside. Itwasevenalignedtothestate standards! Shehadcompleted alltheresearchandmadesure therequisitionwasenteredbythe officialRequestoratherschool. Shehadplentyoftimebeforeher
Is the request reasonable?
An executive on the 14th floor, Danny Glover, was excited to start a new endeavor with the District. Danny is a very hospitable person and thought a new mini refrigerator for his office would allow him to offer refreshments for his guests when they came to his office. He asked his executive assistant to enter a requisition for a middle of the road mini fridge, not to cost more than $250. He didn’t want to be extravagant, after all.
RFP Process
Already have a contract? Sometimes, the District has contracts with vendors that are already in place (Office Depot, for example, provides all our office supplies). In this case, Procurement can quickly issue a purchase order, the vendor sends an invoice, the requestor marks the item or service received in Peoplesoft, and A/P makes a payment.
$10K-23,881 $3K-10K <$3K procurementensuresrequestisreasonable procurementresearchescompetitivepricing procurementselects vendor vendorssubmitwritten quotes department approversignsoff
Requestor drafts a scope of service and
In rapidly changing neighborhoods, low-income families struggle to stay in their affordable homes. When a leaseholder passes away or moves out, remaining family members are left vulnerable to harassment and eviction from landlords. New York City has laws to protect them, but they’re complex and don’t often reach the people who need Project medium: paper poster
How: Running co-design workshops and testing prototypes with neighborhood residents allowed us to translate complex policy into illustrations and stories that we turned into a fold-out guide. This project included myself and one other designer.
Outcome: Pass It On! is a colorful step-by-step guide to the succession process in both English and Spanish. The guide is used by the NYC non-profit Housing Court Answers to provide trainings for hundreds of New Yorkers facing eviction.
Challenge I overcame: lawyers working on the project had a hard time writing in plain language; illustrations allowed us to remove as much text as possible and avoid translation problems.
your family. Usted debe demostrar que la persona que figura en el contrato es “como de familia”.
Testing illustrations and concepts with neighbors.
Party celebrating the final guide with neighborhood residents.
Cover of final printed guide. One user said “it looks like my family!”
Before shifting to a career as a designer in government, I focused on public space projects in New York City and San Francisco. The work showcased here was completed during my roles a designer with The Office of Cheryl Barton and Ken Smith Landscape Architect.
According to the US Census, 11 million naturalized citizens who can vote aren’t voting. We wanted to know why, and what the Center for Civic Design, a nationally respected resource on voting, could design to help local election officials better engage them.
This project led to an initiative that still continues today, and is used in 42 states.
First, we needed to find participants who recently became citizens. This was a niche group, and turned out to be far harder than we expected. We went to Mosques in Detroit, Libraries in DC, and restaurants in Queens, NY. In the end, we talked to 44 new citizens from 26 countries.
What I learned about recruiting niche participants: big organizations like the YMCA that provide naturalization support had networks and trust; this helped save recruiting time. Small partners can respondly suddenly after long periods of silence. Patience and persistence paid off.
We created a moderator guide that asked participants to share what perspectives they brought from their countries around voting. We also asked them to design their own voting guide (left).
A participant from China showed that becoming a citizen is only just the beginning. He drew stairs and a road on which he wrote “processing” and “learning” in order to participate in the voting process. In the distance was a setting sun.
We successfully wrote and delivered a successful report to our funder. But our real audience, election officials across the country, don’t have much time to read reports.
We compiled a book of stories from a selection of our participants (with their consent) and published it on our website. We also wrote a report of the biggest insights we learned.
While a report and book of stories were great outputs, they weren’t exactly the tools we knew election officials really needed.
What I learned: stories needed to be succinct, and a continuous structure helped readers see patterns between each one: how they defined civic life, how they thought about language, why they came to the US, and what the expected as an American.
Practical tools were placed on the Center for Civic Design’s website (above, top). Templates for communication plans and ready-made language access plans are available for counties to adapt (above).
A communications plan maps to the timeline election officials use to prepare for elections.
Draft social media messaging is ready to use and adapt as necessary.
How we measured success: we know that tools are successful when they start to be shared (without our knowledge) at conferences for state and local election officials. This image was sent to us by a friend.
While we knew our tools were successful, we envisioned a world in which election departments dedicated time and staff to thinking about new citizens. We piloted a 5 month long training program to help election officials build a language access plan and engagement strategies for connecting with new citizens. We piloted this work with election officials in Washoe County, Nevada, Adams County, Colorado, and Sonoma County, California. We acted as their guides and project managers.
We used the toolkit we published on the Center for Civic Design’s website to develop a series of workshops. Here, election officials in Adams County, Colorado begin identifying restaurants, churches, or other community centers they could develop relationships with.
Activities included stakeholder mapping exercises, reading our interviews with new citizens, reviewing our draft communications plan, and laying out the structure of their language access plan (above).
How we measured success: a few months after our partnership ended, we learned that Adams County hired their first Language Access Coordinator.
Additionally, we were excited to find out that not only had the County created a robust language access plan, but also done extensive work building connections with local community members (left: Adams County’s website showing 18 of their local partnerships built with our guidance).
What I learned: election officials were more moved by our stories from new citizens than I expected. We ended up re-organizing the workshop to spend more time relfecting on them.
Today, the Center for Civic Design has a robust language access arm of their organization, and a community of election officials around the US are using our tools to better connect with new citizens. We started out, though, with a $70k grant for a research report.
We always knew election officials would need more than a research report, and we built our online toolkit because of that.
While we knew the toolkit was helpful, we also knew it would take more effort to get election officials to do the deeper empathy building work needed to create system-wide change. How could we get face-to-face time with election jurisdictions? We didn’t have a perfectly-planned strategy for making this happen. Election officials are pulled in many directions and have many competing priorities.
Here are a few things we did to move the needle.
Partner with another organization
We partnered with the Center for Technology & Civic Life, who had networks of election officials who had write language access plans because of new Census data. They made the connections for us and provided more funding. We offered those election officials free help.
a community
Bringing the election officials together as a cohort created a support structure and sense of collaboration between people with the same challenges.
Build a formal language access practice
The Center for Civic Design created an entire language access arm of their organization (see right). Along with the community we established, there were now stories to tell at workshops and conferences across the country.
The Center for Civic Design’s language access practice continues today, with more staff members and funding (left).
How do we measure the maturity of Customer Experience (CX) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)?
A Biden executive order from 2021 asked agencies to start implementing CX practices, but what did that mean? What did good CX look like? And beyond that, how could you build tools to help agencies grow the CX skills they needed to improve?
Role: project co-lead, plus 2 contractors at various points in project
When I arrived in this role, a Microsoft form had been circulating that asked agencies questions about their CX skills. Essentially, Components (a technical term for sub-agencies at DHS, like TSA) would take a 10question test.The idea was that it would generate a score that indicated how advanced that agency’s CX skills were.
For various reasons, this didn’t work. The Secret Service even made a cheat sheet so they could get a high score. It turned out that Components were used to a culture of tools like program health assessments and score-based tests. CX, which is largely driven by HumanCentered Design methods, needed a different approach.
Relationships and connections across Components are key to understanding CX Maturity. Our office, which was newly formed, didn’t have these relationships yet.
Component participation was low, but their score was used to declare the CX abilities of an entire agency. If 34 people from USCIS took our survey, we couldn’t use that score to represent all of USCIS.
CX uses a lot of jargon. Even when explained, we received feedback from Components that some of the language in the survey didn’t make sense. Terms like “usability testing,” “human-centered design practices” were not understood.
Scores aren’t helpful. Nobody wants to score poorly on a test. Framing the CX Maturity work as an assessment resulted in a focus on specific scores and led to ranking comparison.
Our hypothesis: showing Components concrete actions they can take, rather than a score, would lead to better conversations and understandings of what CX is.
We envisioned DHS Components in a room, enthusiastically discussing CX and sharing ideas about human-centered design. Could we make this happen? Where could we begin?
First, we tackled jargon. We adapted the 5 CX Core Functions that Components were already required to report on. Re-using this language helped streamline how we were talking about CX and built a shared language across DHS.
We started off talking to CX experts already in DHS. We asked them what would be worthwhile measuring, and what milestones would be realistic.
With these experts, we codesigned a set of cards that could be used to facilitate conversations about concrete CX skills: things like watching customers use a form, or creating a journey map.
Once we built drafts, we did usability tests with people who weren’t CX experts.
“An
historic event.”
Dana Chisnell, Executive Director for Customer Experience at
DHS.
Last year, we launched the first CX Maturity Workshop in DC. Over 40 participants came from teams within the US Coast Guard, FEMA, USCIS, CBP, ICE, and TSA. For the first time in DHS history, Components came together to discuss their CX skillsets. TSA is seen here sharing stories of successes with others. This collaboration had never occured before.
In small groups, facilitators led conversations about CX skills using our deck of cards, moving them into categories like “we do this now” or “we want to do this in the future.”
This method was highly successful, because it put the focus on what was going well, and what Components could do next.
Groups walked away not only with a clear understanding what CX was, but a clear understanding of what the entire agency could do to grow their skills. That’s great. But how do we make plans for improving?
We provided both individualized reports of the team’s results, as well as heat maps that showed what skills (or cards) were most practiced or not. These metrics were shared across DHS.
Skills that were the least practiced were used to create strategic plans, coaching offerings, or trainings to help Components level up.
Above: screenshot of heat maps; one of the leastpracticed skills was having ongoing conversations with users.
Because of this lack of skills in having ongoing conversations with users, we designed a comprehensive usability testing masters program. Participants walked away with the tools and skills they needed to do their own usability testing, and even teach it to others.
Above: screenshot of a portion of our usability testing masters program.
Through follow-up workshops, we helped Components decide what skills they wanted to improve upon for the next year. With leadership in the room, teams were not only able to plan how they wanted to improve their CX skills, but also get committment from their bosses that they’d be supported.
Besides using our learnings to direct courses and strategic plans, we also celebrated successes that Components had shared by publishing stories in online and in our newsletter that highlighted people at DHS doing good CX work. We even held a CX award show in December 2024.
Left: screenshot of FEMA story.
“The mentoring offered by DHS was probably the best training experience I have had in my FEMA career because it was oneon-one, personalized to my needs, relevant and timely, well planned out, and gave me concrete tools I can use in the future. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity and the praise it has garnered with my superiors!” FEMA participant in usability testing masters course