USCIS - Transformation User Experience Design

Goal: Transform the U.S. Immigration Process

• My Role: Product Design Lead and Program Manager (Consultant)

• My Team: 12 product designers/user researchers, a content strategist, and a creative project manager

• Customer Problem: Help immigration officers seamlessly transition from paper files to ELIS, a digital case management system

• Successful Result: The team supported the launch of more than 40 products and tools that help ELIS users, reduce the backlog and reduce adjudication time.

From 2017-23 I led a large team of product designers in USCIS’ Transformation Delivery Division. My team provided design and user research services for the ELIS system, used by immigration officers to process requests for citizenship, permanent residency, and work visas. We supported 26 delivery teams and a daily release schedule.

Paper files can be time-consuming and expensive—storing them, transferring them between locations, pulling information for FOIA requests, and reviewing content during interviews. However, immigration officers accustomed to working with paper can be resistant to change.

USCIS plans to go paperless within a few years, leading to an aggressive push to build and launch more functionality. At this time, ELIS processes 79% of the case management workload at USCIS.

Our team established a user-centered design process for the ELIS system, in an environment that had always been developer-led. We established a Research and Design Operations practice and successfully integrated this practice into agile delivery.

Challenges

Digitizing the immigration process posed a complex set of challenges for each product: business units and locations work differently and many discussions with stakeholders were needed to agree on a consolidated workflow. ELIS has changed how people do their work and the program needed to build trust with people in the field.

• We were introducing UX strategy and processes where none existed before

• Changes to process and design were often viewed as risky by stakeholders and delivery teams

• The code was inconsistently developed, so an immediate global refresh of styles was impossible

• Access to design and research software must undergo a lengthy government procurement process and many tools do not meet security requirements

Process

Pilot by pilot, the team integrated UX into DevOps while developing a longer-term strategy for continuous data tracking and improvement, building trust with a collaborative approach.

• Created an inventory of the current user interface elements in ELIS

• Partnered with a development team to create and maintain a code-based atomic design system, named Beacon

• Established a cadence for design sprints, prototyping and moderated usability testing

• Embedded with development teams to ensure clear communication during design and development

• Established a series of weekly working sessions with product owners for design approvals

• Accompanied project teams on a variety of field visits to collect requirements and observe how officers and contractors did their work

• Gathered usability trend data from training calls and incident ticket reports

• Launched the first internal user analytics tracking program (Matomo)

• Proposed and helped launch the first employee-facing help chatbot

Results

By designing interactive prototypes, testing those prototypes with target audiences, and measuring user analytics post-release, the team designed products that better meet people’s needs, reduce development time, and increase operational efficiencies. Our team worked on more than 40 projects since joining USCIS. Successful products include:

• An upgraded “My Cases” landing page that all users see when they first log into ELIS, with multiple improvements and features based on needs documented in the field

• A more streamlined approach for people to assign themselves new cases

• The ability to generate an electronic record for legal requests within a few minutes, versus a few weeks with the paper-based process

• An enhanced Evidence feature that consolidates the process for viewing and requesting electronic versions of documents

• The ability to create “family packs” of applicants for cases requiring group review

• A built-in help tool (the first employee-facing chatbot at USCIS) to introduce new features in ELIS and prevent the creation of incident tickets