Standards and principles

California Customer Experience Principle

State departments should design products and services to meet the needs of Californians.

This benefits everyone:

People trust in a government that meets their needs. Designing around customer experience is humane, transparent, reliable, and effective.
The government is effective and efficient. This saves everyone time and resources.

Foundations

Good customer experience is based on human-centered design and a product approach.

Human-centered design

Start by finding out what people need. When we design by putting people's needs first, our policies, programs, and services work better.

Learn the basics in the Office of Data and Innovation’s (ODI) human-centered design course.

Product approach

Set a vision for what you want your service to achieve. Deliver early and often to continuously improve.

Start your journey with ODI’s 6 product approach principles.

Research and data

To deliver great services, you have to understand their needs and experience. To do this, you’ll need to get data through research. It’s important to have good practices for gathering and handling data.

Research

Research is the best way to find out what people need. You start with a question you want to answer. Good research questions give you the data to decide how to improve your services. You can also use research to measure how well your improvements work.

Maze has a guide on building a research strategy that aligns with business goals.

Data

Data is information that helps you understand your customer.

Using demographic data

Demographic data is information about groups of people. Some examples are their age, income, or gender. This data can help you make sure your experience works well for every group you serve.

The California Data Standard lays out best practices for collecting demographic data.

Handling data

It’s important to handle data with care. Use data privacy best practices to protect data throughout its lifecycle.

ODI’s data minimization toolkit helps you apply best practices for managing data.

Design

Designing is a series of decisions. If you help make a service, you’re a designer. Well-designed services adapt to people, not the other way around.

Content design

Services that are easy to understand are easy to use. Content design helps people move through services with the least amount of effort.

Get an introduction with ODI’s content design principles.

Use the California Plain Language Equity Standard to find out if you’re writing in plain language.

Service design

Service design shapes the end-to-end service experience, looking at the people, processes, and tools involved.

The New York City’s Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity has a good overview of civic service design.