Our mission
Our goal is to grow the Commonwealth's ability to deliver great experiences and outcomes for constituents. We do this by helping state organizations grow their experience design and research (XDR) capabilities.
- Experience design: Imagine and improve constituents’ experience with government. Design interactions with your organization so that they are easy, fast, accessible, and effective.
- Experience research: Learn about your constituents’ goals, journeys, and challenges. Assess how well your services work for them. Use what you learn to improve what you make.
This mission can only succeed through collaboration with state organizations like yours. Together, we’ll create a community dedicated to delivering for constituents and growing our capabilities.
Who we are
Our team includes experience researchers, experience designers, and content strategists. We are committed to an iterative, constituent-centered approach to improving state services. We want to support you and work with you to make it easier to design and deliver great constituents’ experiences.
The CX COE is part of Massachusetts Digital Service, which sits within the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS).
How we collaborate with state organizations
We work with people, teams, and organizations that want to learn about constituents’ experiences and improve them. To do this, we join forces with you and work toward your goals together. Along the way, you’ll learn and implement constituent-centered ways of working.
To practice constituent-centered design, we learn who our constituents are. We learn about their goals and perspectives. We test what we make with them and learn what to improve.
We also learn from you. You have innovative ways of thinking about people, products, and services. We want to learn about these and help you share them with other organizations.
Services
Enablement engagements
In an enablement engagement, our team partners with yours to help you accomplish your goals. Your staff will learn new skills. Your organization will learn new practices and methods. You might even invest in new roles. Here are some examples of our recent collaborations:
- Supported the Department of Unemployment Assistance in hiring and onboarding a Lead Content Strategist. Her work has reduced negative feedback by 65% so far.
- Collaborated with the Municipal Vulnerability Program (part of EEA) to redesign a website to meets its audience’s needs. They also avoided an expensive procurement and designed new content using the tools they had.
- Provided training in accessibility and content design for a new content writer at the Office for Refugees and Immigrants. The organization is now on its way to meeting the accessibility requirements defined by Title 2.
- Helped the Publications Team at MassHealth conduct its first interview study with constituents.
- Advised and supported Housing and Livable Communities on the discovery phase of their Common Housing Application initiative. Also helped hire an XDR Team Lead to move the initiative forward.
- Supported Health and Human Services in integrating constituent research into their Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment initiative. Also helped hire an XDR team lead so they could continue to grow their capabilities.
- Consulted with Career Services on the discovery phase for their Employment Modernization and Transformation initiative. This work involved getting the most out of their vendor contract and identifying what capabilities they needed for their transformation to succeed.
Communities of Practice
A Community of Practice is a group with a shared interest committed to learning and growing together. Its members share knowledge, skills, and experiences.
We facilitate 3 Communities of Practice:
- Content Lab is for anyone who creates, edits, or manages content. The focus is on improving the information we publish to make sure its current, clear, and constituent-centered. It meets a few times a month.
- The Experience Research (XR) Community of Practice focuses on developing experience research skills. Its members include researchers, product managers, and staff looking to learn new ways of understanding the people they serve. It holds monthly workshops and seminars.
- Social Media Managers come together to collaborate on campaigns, discuss best practices, and report issues with social platforms.
Each also includes team chats where you can collaborate and get support from the community.
Guides, tools, and resources
We create guides and tools to support your work delivering for constituents.
Our Starter Kit is for organizations that want to grow their experience design and research capacity. It introduces key concepts such as Constituent-Centered Design. It also includes practices that you can implement right now to improve products and services.
Our resource library includes tools, templates, and guides to support your work. For example, you can find:
- Guidance on compensating research participants and archiving documents
- A style guide template your organization can customize to support coordinated, consistent communications
- Tutorial on conducting a plain language review
- Template job descriptions you can use if you’re hiring an experience design or research role
Engage with us
We want to hear from you if you want to improve how you deliver for constituents. For example:
- You’re struggling to get a key initiative off the ground
- People can’t find the information they need on your websites and publications
- You’d like to be able to conduct research with the people you serve (interviews, surveys, etc.)
- You want to redesign a process or service but aren’t sure where to start
We’ll schedule a meeting to learn more about your goals, team, and timeline. We’ll also discuss the types of support you need.