The Biden Administration's approach to human-centered design to re-orient government around a core set of "life experience" personas

Federal Government leaders worked with President’s Management Council (PMC) to select priority life experiences for the 2022 designation cycle (announced in April 2022). These include: Approaching retirement, Birth and early childhood for low-income mothers and children, Facing a financial shock and becoming newly eligible for critical supports Navigating transition to civilian life, Recovering from a disaster.

Each Life Experience team and agency collaborators engaged in a process to learn how people interact with government during these moments in their lives. The research involved learning from and speaking directly to a diverse representation of members of the public. Multi-disciplinary teams, including service designers, evaluation professionals, policy experts, program staff, external experts on detail to the teams, led the application of methods such as collecting post-transaction feedback, first-person qualitative research, quantitative data analysis, and other approaches to generate insights and identify trends across real customer experiences. Agency leaders and stakeholders across government participated throughout the process, including in bi-weekly sprint share-outs, to encourage ongoing reflection, iteration, and identifying areas to dive deeper. Customer stories and journey maps are the centerpieces of each summary.