U.S. Air Force
Building service design capacity
Embedding service design ways of thinking and working throughout the U.S. Air Force, starting with BESPIN and the U.S. Weather Systems Program Office.
Why service design?
Government services involve a complex mix of components, such as policies, operations, people, and technology. For people accessing government services, this complexity is often passed onto them. This results in disjointed and frustrating experiences, or worse — not getting the services they need. For example, how many times have you been transferred from one customer support agent to the next, only to have to repeat the same information over and over again? This type of inefficiency is due to a lack of service design.
Through service design, government organizations can take a more holistic, human-centered approach to providing services, including both the “frontstage” (what the user sees) and the “backstage” (what happens behind the scenes). The result is optimized, end-to-end user experiences that deliver greater public value.
According to the Design Management Institute, design-centric organizations consistently achieve high levels of performance. Clear benefits and tangible results mean organizations across all industries, including government, are increasingly investing in service design.
Always design a thing by considering it in its larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.
Eero Saarinen, Architect
What we deliver
Our goal is to help you embed service design ways of thinking and working throughout your entire organization. To accomplish that, our experts collaborate with you to identify your goals and needs, then pair with you to solve complex problems and build internal capacity using the Skylight Service Design Framework.
Skylight Service Design Framework
Developed in collaboration with the renowned UC San Diego Design Lab, this framework draws on years of experience working on complex government projects. It leverages best practices for building services that work better for users and the government offices who administer them.
Client spotlights
From defense to healthcare, our experts and methodologies have helped multiple government agencies deliver better public services in ways that only service design can.
U.S. Air Force
Modernizing the management of personal protective equipment
Using service design to transform how the U.S. Air Force provides better-fitting gear to aircrew personnel.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Transforming how Medicaid and CHIP data are leveraged
Pinpointing opportunities to deliver better user experience journeys within a complex ecosystem of systems supporting the Medicaid and CHIP programs.
How to engage with us
The best way to contract with Skylight for service design support is through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.
Through this program, we were awarded an STTR Phase II contract related to service design. The scope of this contract encompassed the full range of activities that go into delivering better user experience journeys. These activities include, but aren’t limited to, user research, user experience design, product management, software delivery, data management, and organizational change management.
As long as your support requirements “extend or derive” from the original scope of work under our STTR Phase II contract, you can leverage it to issue a direct (or non-competitive) Phase III award to Skylight — without any dollar, time, size standard, or workshare restrictions.
For more information on how to work with Skylight through the SBIR/STTR program, check out our guide.