Jessica Teal
‘It’s the Storytelling Process:’ Jessica Teal on the Key to Building Support within Government for Digital Transformation
| Jessica Teal was a designer with the U.S. Digital Service from April 2015 to January 2017. Prior, she was the Design Manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and also worked as a designer across a range of nonprofit and mission-driven organizations. |
Jessica Teal was one of the first designers to join the U.S. Digital Service, bringing a skillset that was sorely lacking in several agencies and the federal government at large. Her past experience on the Obama campaign and at a slate of mission-driven organizations made her transition smoother than others’ — but adapting to the federal government still had challenges.
Below, Jessica discusses her work at the Department of Education, what the private sector can learn from the public sector, and the long-lasting friendships that USDS forged.
July 8, 2024
Kathy Pham:
Jessica, can you tell us about your journey to the U.S. Digital Service?
Jessica Teal:
I was design manager on the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, which entailed everything from the brand to the website to print materials like event backdrops and podium signs. After that experience, I was hooked — there’s no going back. I wanted to work in the broader social impact space on the progressive side of politics.
I started my own business in the meantime, working on brands, websites, and digital marketing for folks in the mission-driven space. And around 2014, I received a call from my old colleague Haley Van Dyck. She said, “Hey, you should learn about this thing called USDS.”
USDS had launched, but it was just getting started and they didn’t really have much design expertise in the broad sense, from user experience design to visual design. I relocated to D.C. in April 2015 and took a sabbatical from my company so that I could focus on USDS. It seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be at the ground level of something, but also to solve huge problems and help people get access to government services they deserve.
Kathy:
What was your first day like?
Jessica:
The first day was overwhelming, like shell shock. I thought, “Can I pull this off?” When I heard which agency I was going to be assigned to for my first project — the Department of Education — I was really excited. It was the perfect match, because there was going to be a tangible product versus a series of discovery sprints and strategic recommendations.
Kathy:
The work that you did at the Department of Ed has continued to live on for many, many iterations of USDS. The prototypes you produced are shown as a really effective way to understand what people need. Can you talk about some of the concepts you brought into government that shifted how things were done?
Jessica:
In that particular environment, when USDS folks come into an agency and they’re building those relationships and having conversations, it can stay in this ethereal space of ideas. And words only mean so much. Because I had the right skillset, I was able to take those words by the big thinkers from both the agency and the USDS teams and put them in a visual format, so things didn’t seem so hard to understand.
Translating that down into simple visuals that would get people excited, help them understand exactly what we were creating, and help things move along faster. It was something tangible that we could show users right away and iterate on immediately based on their responses.
Kathy:
How was the team set up at the time, both at USDS and the Department of Education?
Jessica:
Lisa Gelobter was the head of the USDS unit at the Department of Education, and Erie Meyer was a strategic advisor — especially when it came to hacking the bureaucracy of the department. At the beginning, David Nesting was there to advise from a technology strategy point of view, and we also had folks from 18F. We each had our area of specialty, and Lisa and Erie brought it all together to make sure things were strategically connected and the agency heads were on board.
Kathy:
What was USDS HQ like at the time?
Jessica:
We spent the majority of our time on-site at the agency; my involvement with HQ was limited to Thursday team meetings, as well as serving as community practice lead for design. And anytime USDS was recruiting, we participated in those interviews.
So I knew my Department of Education team best, and then the design community of practice folks next. But there were people throughout USDS who I didn’t get to know because I wasn’t working with them day in, day out.
Kathy:
Tell us more about the design committee of practice. What was that like?
Jessica:
We were starting this from scratch, trying to see what would work. We would do a lot of best practice sharing; a show-and-tell of what we were working on in our various agencies and figuring out how we could support each other with those projects. There was a lot of emotional support, as well.
The most valuable part for me were one-on-one conversations when somebody needed to talk about their head space. We developed really solid, authentic friendships, and we still talk.
Kathy:
Jess, what are some big milestones or main turning points you recall?
Jessica:
Organizationally, it was the setup of the Communities of Practice. These made sure we were all sharing the same brain in how we operate, and also that we were learning from each other. Because obviously, the same lessons can apply to a different agency.
In terms of specific projects, one big milestone was getting a list of folks who we could reach out to for usability testing on a regular basis. That let us check whether we were heading in the right direction per user needs, because it’s so easy for agencies and even ourselves to bring our own perspectives and priorities. Every week, I scheduled interviews with people. Without those, we would’ve gotten more pushback and things wouldn’t have been as efficient.
Kathy:
What about government made that such a big milestone? Because it’s pretty normal in other environments to talk to users.
Jessica:
Fear, or not understanding how the rules work, or making your own assumptions. “We’ve never talked to people, we can’t talk to people, the Paperwork Reduction Act, blah, blah, blah.” But pushing the envelope and showing that it could be done led to a better product that could get out the door faster.
That process changed a lot of minds. When you give a presentation of what you’d discovered to agency leadership, those are the things that they remember — not this data point and that key finding. It’s the storytelling process that makes people remember what’s important.
Kathy:
I love that. One of the goals of this project is to show anyone who’s starting a digital service that you can’t just parachute a bunch of engineers in. It’s about all these skills you’ve brought up: the design, the storytelling, the policy.
Jessica:
Another big part of that is developing relationships with internal folks to build trust and show you’re not just swooping in. Instead, you’re starting off by listening. For the first few weeks, we went on a listening tour with various department heads, because a lot of the time the civil servants there get the short end of the stick. Nobody listens to them, but they have had the direct, one-on-one experience with constituents, with the technology, and with the products. And that allows them to surface things that need to be resolved. Listening is key to understanding the dynamics of the agency you’re operating in.
Kathy:
That’s great. Jess, how would you describe USDS?
Jessica:
It’s an organization of people who are extremely talented, and who also want to use their skills and their power for something that will make a difference in the lives of people across the country. Who want to make a difference in the lives of Americans and see that change themselves, versus upping the revenue or the profit margins of a company. People also got to start something from scratch at USDS, to set goals for themselves.
Kathy:
Jess, what are you most proud of, and what did you do at USDS that stuck around?
Jessica:
I’ll focus on gratitude, instead. I’m grateful that I learned from all these experts in the field, like Jared Spool and Dana Chisnell, who were well-known in the field of user experience. And when my term was over, I was able to take those lessons and the scrappiness of USDS back into the social impact space and apply them to the nonprofits and foundations I work with.
Kathy:
I recently met someone who had never worked in civic tech, and they said: “The private sector has nothing to learn from government. We just need people to bring tech skills into government.” I was so mad — people learn so much from government. There’s so much to gain from having people who understand government.
Jess, anything else you want to share?
Jessica:
The overall experience was life-changing and opened my eyes even more. And on the College Scorecard project specifically at the Department of Education, I really do feel it impacted how people make their college university choices. There are people that are making better decisions for themselves, which is very rewarding.
Kathy:
Thank you, Jess.
Jessica:
Thanks, Kathy.