Insights

Writing on complex product design.

Articles on product design, UX architecture, design systems, and complex enterprise systems - organized by persona and topic, drawn from real projects.

23 articles

Government & Public Sector

FoundersFrom MVP to Full Version

Why GovTech MVPs Don't Look Like Startup MVPs

Founders are taught to ship the scrappiest MVP and iterate in public. In govtech, that instinct can sink you. A citizen service that looks like a beta — or breaks for a screen reader user — loses trust you may never win back. So I redefine 'minimum': not a thin slice of everything, but one complete, accessible, end-to-end path a real person can finish with dignity. Narrow the use cases brutally. Never narrow the quality. Then grow in concentric circles — keep the simple core intact, layer depth around it. Your launch version should be something you'd defend in a public hearing. That's the bar.

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Government & Public Sector

CEOsPersonalization & Tailored Models

Personalization That Survives Public Scrutiny

When CEOs hear 'personalization' they picture a consumer feed that learns you. In a public service, that's a liability — citizens didn't opt into being profiled, and any hint of differential treatment invites fairness questions you don't want to answer in public. So I reframe it as relevance, not prediction. Not a model guessing what you want — a service showing each person only what actually applies to them, driven by their situation, not surveillance. A parent sees the parent path. Someone who already applied sees status, not a fresh form. That cuts confusion and call volume, and every tailoring decision stays explainable. The efficiency of personalization, without the consumer-playbook downside.

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Government & Public Sector

Project ManagersUsability Testing

Usability Testing as Schedule Insurance for Public Services

Usability testing isn't a threat to your timeline — it's insurance on it. The costly defects aren't the ones found in a session; they're the ones found after launch when the fix means re-planning everyone's quarter. Test early, test on the worst device, and label every finding by whether it blocks the core task. A PMO can schedule around that. It can't schedule around surprises.

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Government & Public Sector

Product ManagersFirst-Run Onboarding

The First Run Is Where Public Trust Is Won or Lost

Consumer onboarding sells value. Govtech onboarding has a harder job: convince a wary first-timer they're in the right place and can finish without calling anyone. So I skip the product tour — they came to do one thing, not learn a tool. Tell them what they'll need, the steps, the time, then get out of the way. The metric is completion on first attempt. If people finish without help, it worked — quietly.

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Government & Public Sector

CEOsSpecific Feature ROI

What a GovTech Feature Actually Returns

In govtech, the most expensive feature you own is the call center. Every feature I design is judged on one question: does it let a citizen finish a task without picking up the phone? That's not UX polish — that's deflected cost, avoided complaints, and risk you never have to explain to the press. ROI in the public sector isn't about adding features. It's about which ones quietly retire a cost. Spread investment evenly and you ship five half-features that all still route to a human. Pick one self-service path and make it genuinely complete. The return shows up in the queue that didn't form.

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Government & Public Sector

Product ManagersMicro-interactions & Animation

Animation as Reassurance, Not Delight

In govtech, I don't judge animation by how delightful it feels — I judge it by how much anxiety it removes. A clear loading state stops duplicate submissions. Inline validation catches the error early. A settled confirmation tells someone they can stop worrying. Each one quietly removes a reason to call support. If users notice the motion, I've overdone it. Good public-sector animation is felt as calm, not seen as flair.

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Government & Public Sector

Engineering LeadersDesign Systems

A Design System That Survives an Accessibility Audit

A govtech design system has one job most people miss: making it hard to ship an inaccessible component. If WCAG is law, compliance can't live in QA — it has to live in your primitives. Build the accessible button once, and every team inherits it for free. That's not design polish. That's how engineering leaders turn accessibility from recurring risk into a solved problem.

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Government & Public Sector

Product Managers

Designing GovTech Products: How Do You Spec a System for Citizens Across Every Extreme of Age, Language, and Digital Literacy?

Product managers in GovTech, there is no "average" user - there are citizens across every extreme. On a government project, we built "Layered Complexity": a simple base layer for everyone, deeper layers for those who need the detail. Don't design for a mediocre middle that doesn't exist - design layers that every citizen can tailor to themselves.

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Government & Public Sector

Engineering LeadersIndustry-Specific Accessibility

In GovTech, Accessibility Is a Spec, Not a Score

Most teams treat accessibility as a quality bar to clear. In govtech it's a spec with legal teeth — 'mostly accessible' is a failed audit. That changes how you build, not just how you test. Semantic HTML and a real focus model aren't cleanup work; they're the floor a screen reader user stands on. The fancy custom date picker is exactly where public services fail — so I stay conservative, favoring native elements over clever ones. Your users are on assistive tech, old devices, in sunlight, under stress, with low digital literacy — all on the same form. Bake the checks into CI. Make keyboard-only a definition of done. The goal isn't a passing score. It's a service nobody is locked out of.

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Government & Public Sector

Project ManagersDocumentation & Organizational Handoff

Documentation That Outlives the People Who Wrote It

Government services outlive the teams that build them. Vendors change, staff move — the service stays. So documentation isn't a closeout task; it's institutional memory. Capture the why behind the core-vs-optional split, how every accessibility choice maps to WCAG, and why the Design System is the source of truth. Write it so the next team can act without a meeting. That's the difference between a maintainable service and an expensive rebuild.

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Government & Public Sector

Project Managers

Running a Government Project: Navigating Between Ministries, Committees, and Public-Sector IT Teams

Project managers working with the public sector, don't force a startup methodology onto it. On a government project, we drew up a detailed "stakeholder map" with a dedicated communication process for each party, plus built-in buffer time. The public-sector pace is a reality - adapt the project to it, not the other way around.

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Government & Public Sector

Engineering LeadersR&D Collaboration

Designing With R&D So Accessibility Is Architecture, Not Cleanup

If your designer hands engineering finished screens and calls WCAG 'a frontend detail,' you've already lost. In govtech, accessibility is architecture — focus order, semantics, i18n, error states. Solve it once in the component system, with R&D in the room early, or relitigate it on every screen forever. The clean contract between design and engineering is what the public experiences as trust.

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