Coaching Government Employees on Design Principles

with Montgomery County Government

PARTNER
Montgomery County Government

SKILLS UTILIZED
Teaching & Coaching
Visual Design

THE CHALLENGE

Government communications and forms contain information that is crucial to residents, but these materials are often designed by frontline staff who have limited communication design and visual design expertise. The result is communication materials that are difficult to decipher and government forms that are challenging to fill out accurately.

We saw this problem and pitched to Montgomery County Government senior leadership the idea of a training and coaching series. They responded by contacting over a hundred directors, managers, and frontline staff and encouraging them to take our course, titled Design 101.

PROCESS

Crafted the Training Materials

Our team chose 3 topics that we felt would be most relevant and impactful for government employees to gain competency in:

  1. Visual communication

  2. Plain language

  3. Improving government forms

We pulled from other training materials to curate and craft a curriculum for Montgomery County Government. Each topic started with a 1-hour virtual training seminar.

To deepen the learnings, after each seminar we offered an optional 2-week sprint for those who wanted coaching. Those who signed up for sprints would bring a document or form they wanted to improve. They would be coached through using the design principles taught in the seminars. At the end of the first week, each participant would have a prototype or new version of their document or form. In the second week, they would show the prototype to some members of their intended audience and ask a series of questions. Many participants were surprised by how easy it was to find testers and how insightful the feedback was!

My values in action: Be a shepherd.

    • FLOW

    • HIERARCHY

    • Size/Scale

    • Color

    • Images/Illustrations

    • Contrast

    • Alignment

    • Proximity

    • Repetition

    • White space

    • Balance

  • Organizing the information

    • Line breaks

    • Organization

    • Headings

    • Tables

    Improving the text

    • Word choice

    • Precision

    • Consistency

    • Keep it conversational

  • Instructions

    • Purpose

    • Prerequisites

    • Steps

    • What’s next

    Flow

    • Sections

    • Order/Organization

    • Doesn’t apply to everyone

    Accessibility

    • Font size and color

    • Language access

    Visual Design

    • Size/Scale

    • Proximity

    • Left-aligned text

    • All-caps

    • White space

    Plain Language

    • Word choice

    • Acronyms

    • Precision

    • Consistency

If you’re interested in seeing the principle descriptions, reach out to me!

OUTCOME

Clearer Government Communications

8

137

gov’t employees
trained in seminars

sprints run

12

15

gov’t employees
coached in sprints

departments represented

See the before-and-after from the sprints below:

FEEDBACK

“This was fast-paced, but it was very informative. I didn’t think I’d have all these takeaways in this amount of time!”

— R.H.J.

“Getting feedback from my intended audience is something I’m going to do from now on. I didn’t think it’d be so easy!”

— F.H.

“I wouldn’t have come to these conclusions without the feedback [from my intended audience].”

— M.M.F.