Building a UX Team from the Ground Up at FDIC

Rebecca Goodman at UXDX USA. Video: https://youtu.be/XAUMjooQXdw

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Feelings check and what the FDIC does

[00:00:00] Good morning everybody. We've got a couple of quick interactivity pieces here before we get going. Oh, is my clicker working? Apparently not. Cool, all right.

[00:00:13] Quick feelings check. If you're online you can type it in the chat, but fingers, hold them up, one through 10, how you feeling today? I'm at an eight because I saw some stuff when I went for a walk this morning. All right, cool.

[00:00:32] Now for something completely different, because I am not your average individual. I'm sure you get that feel all the time, so let's all brace ourselves, myself included. My name is Rebecca Goodman and I'm the chief digital officer for the FDIC. Oh no, I swear I know how to work a clicker, I promise. All right, so I give up.

[00:00:59] My talk is originally called "Revolutionizing UX in Regulatory Institutions: A Journey of Innovation", but I have changed it to the budding journey of innovation. The reason that is, is because before I was hired they didn't have anybody running their digital properties, so it was a very unique thing.

[00:01:24] But before we get into that, what do you all know about the FDIC? Do you know what the FDIC stands for? Show of hands. What does it stand for, anybody who's got their hands up? Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, excellent. And do you know what we do? Right, okay, so we insure deposits.

[00:01:45] For those that maybe want a more in-depth definition, my boss gave it to me in plain language, so I've got to read it, I'm sorry. We issue banks insurance based on the size of the deposits that the banks insure. Banks agree to certain restrictions on what they can and can't do with their money, and if the bank fails, the FDIC arranges the sale of those assets. If it does not cover the whole purchase, or the whole amount of the deposits that the bank has, then the FDIC steps in and covers the rest of the deposits, which means your money is always safe if it is in an FDIC insured account.

Setting the scene: a greenfield situation

[00:02:24] So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's take a journey. How does digital fit in here? Come with me on this crazy beginning of a journey and we'll talk about it.

[00:02:38] Let's set the scene. Imagine a recovering full stack developer who has done their best to learn everything they can about the user experience, better, the developer experience, across the government, and has been tagged in for managing the digital properties at the FDIC. I've been given a greenfield situation, which, if you're an engineer, you probably know what that is. It means that you're not constrained by prior work or technology, so it's basically a blank slate to come in and fix the things. Sounds great, right? Oh my gosh, let's talk about how overwhelming.

[00:03:31] As we continue to move along, this is where we started. Super not pretty, not going to lie to you. It's not cohesive, it's not consistent, it's all over the place. We have no consistent navigation across our internal properties, across our external properties. It is hand coded. Like, I'm talking 2002 again. Welcome.

[00:03:56] And on the surface, if you go check out fdic.gov, it looks the exact same right now, I'm not even going to lie to you. But that's on the surface. Underneath, we are actively migrating to a content management system, fdic.gov. First big deal.

Where the team started: five people

[00:04:16] That's all well and good. I'd love to talk more about the tech, but that's another discussion. What I really want to talk to you about is the team, and where we started. You can tell none of my designers helped with this, because stick figures, you know what I mean.

[00:04:32] When we started, we had five people. I had one person who ran the intranet, one person who was in charge of fdic.gov, somebody who ran the social media, a person who was a digital media specialist and basically a catch-all for any stuff that most people didn't really want to do in our office, and then myself. I was charged with figuring out how to move us forward from 2002 to 2019. I know it's 2024, but bear with me, okay. I've got to manage my own expectations.

[00:05:10] Because we still didn't have any UX people, while we got our stuff done, and we did really good, we really gelled, our teamwork looked something like this. It was a bit of a struggle, but we still got work done, we got everything completed on time. Our goal though was to somehow make it better, and how can we do that? Because as a team of five running the whole digital experience for this corporation, no consistency across anything, reporting to OMB about our progress, which, that's a task. OMB is the Office of Management and Budget, which reports directly to the White House. So it's exhausting just thinking about it, you know what I mean?

Defying the odds on hiring

[00:05:58] But let's talk about where we ended up going. Over the last 12 months it has defied all odds in the federal government. I'm sure you hear about how hard, how long it takes to hire someone, how much effort. I mean, if you've applied to a federal government job you've probably waited for months and never heard anything, only to get a rejection saying you're not getting an interview, try again next time. It's not fun.

[00:06:32] But I was able to hire five people, get eight positions classified — and I'll explain what that means in a minute — and assemble a baseline dream team. It actually looks more like this now. I'm not going to lie to you, I did have my designer friend help, because I cannot do magic with pictures. But don't be fooled: while we do have our foundational team in place, we still had a lot of work to do.

[00:07:02] So let's talk about the challenges and successes. The challenges we faced, we're still combating a lot of those today. The biggest challenge was, how do I find the right people that will mix in with the team that I currently have, motivate our current team to push them to do better, and also somehow lay a UX foundational practice across this corporation that is very risk averse and stuck in their ways?

[00:07:36] The number of challenges were immense. So, in order to — I remember we said we'd talk about the position classification in a minute. To get a position to exist on USAJobs.gov you have to go through writing a position description, then you send it through something called classification, where they basically line it up with one of the government categories that some other regulatory agency has put out there. Then they have to say where you can list it along the job scope as far as salary, location, all of these other things. All of this takes anywhere from two to eight weeks, depending on how overwhelmed the HR team is.

[00:08:16] When you get that back, after you've gone back and forth several times, you have to write a job analysis, which is what feeds into USAJobs, and getting that posted takes another four to six weeks. That's just to get the job out there. That doesn't even account for the two weeks it's open, the three weeks it probably takes a subject matter expert to review all those resumés, match it up with the specialized experience, and then send it on my way so I get a list of names I can interview. So imagine how long this process was taking. My first hire: I'd been at the FDIC for a year before I got my first hire on board. That is how much of challenges we've faced.

[00:08:55] I've been here two years officially, as of last week, so just to give you an idea, most of my action here was in the last 12 months. Very proud of it. Yeah, thank you.

[00:09:06] All right, so in 12 months, eight position descriptions classified, five people onboarded. All of those people are related to content and UX: content strategy, content design, two UX designers and a product manager. And no lie, I waited for three months to get my content strategist on board. It was the longest, most painful wait of my life, because we have no content style guide and we are in desperate need of some inclusive language, I'm not even going to lie to you.

[00:09:44] So those were a number of challenges. On the agency-wide side, we had a number of people that had never talked to their end user, but they were sure that they knew what their end user needed and wanted, and they would not hear of any of your doubts about what they knew, because they knew. Let's talk about that, right? That in and of itself is a lot. Am I right, SpongeBob? My kid loves it.

Successes: a design system and stakeholders who now ask for research

[00:10:18] All right, so challenges, they're tough, we're still combating a lot of it today. We've worked really hard with our stakeholders to bring them along. We'll come back to that in a moment. Again, the hiring process was a challenge. I ran over one of our key successes, which was the eight position descriptions, five people hired. I have two job announcements getting ready to go out in the next week, fingers crossed. One's posted today, if HR got my message last night, we'll see. Those are for developers, so that I can get them on board so we can finish building out this whole experience.

[00:11:00] Because now that we have a design system, which was one of my successes, we're getting ready to implement that this summer across the board. Consistent look and feel, at least for fdic.gov, and then our intranet, and then we'll take the world by storm.

[00:11:23] But the other thing that we tackled was the siloed way of working that our stakeholders seem to have come to know and love, and we've brought a few people along. I think Rory was saying, when I was sitting on the sidelines over there, that things don't change overnight, right? And government changes even slower than those things that don't change overnight. I would multiply it by three, that's just me.

[00:11:55] But we've gotten some stakeholders to start to accept that the concept of user experience research is a much needed tool and a much needed data set that they need to take a look at, as opposed to just assuming that they know what their end user wants. So much so that they've started building it into contracts that they put out on the street to get work to come in. Key success. I'm not going to lie, that took a lot of work.

The one strategy: building relationships

[00:12:26] I'd love to tell you that I have it all figured out, but I don't. I really, really don't. But there is only one simple strategy that I can give you that I have used to get as far as I am today, and it's very, very simple: building relationships. It all comes back to building relationships. What we can learn from our peers and our stakeholders across the corporation, what we have learned, what we've applied, how we can leverage them and their newly found education on UX to help us move things forward. So we are slowly but surely driving change in a financially regulated space. Super fun.

[00:13:14] So, wrapping up, I promise. Conclusion. Let's just recap the key points. Richard Gilmore said it best, the insurance man, the OG, right? "One builds relationships based on trust and fulfilling the client's needs. One doesn't score deals in the insurance business." Excellent. Relationships. Assemble your dream team.

[00:13:43] All right, so what's up next for us? We're going to manage the change together in a traditionally siloed organization, and we're going to break those silos down. I promise I did not stretch before this.

[00:14:00] We're going to continue building the plane as we fly it, because who doesn't love that job, right? Not stressful at all. And we're going to integrate new practices while navigating these regulatory requirements, which there are a lot of. If you go to fdic.gov and you look at financial institution letters, there is a whole host of active financial institution letters. Those are rules and regulations that the FDIC puts out to help guide banks during times of disaster, during times of stress, recession, etc. A whole host of that. So trust me when I tell you, regulatory requirements.

[00:14:40] All right, so, final thoughts. I've offered advice that I thought was pretty sound: don't do stupid stuff, or do it, whatever. So again, quick feelings check, how you feeling now? Five, got a couple of fives, three, two, five. Whoa, okay. I'm thinking I'm getting to a five depending on how we do with the questions. So now that we've done all that and we've had the feelings check, let's discuss. What's up? Anything you all want to know?

Q&A

[00:15:18] Host: That is really good. Key success: building relationships. This is why they say I don't get out much.

[00:15:32] Host: One more round of applause. This is not an easy job, to make a change in a regulated environment. I worked for a city for 16 years, yours is a lot harder. So, great advice.

[00:15:47] Rebecca: Oh, thank you.

[00:15:49] Host: Build a relationship. Oh, for sure, yeah, and influence. Let's see: how to manage building relationships and stay away from the political environment?

[00:16:02] Rebecca: I didn't expect y'all to come with the heavy stuff so quick. The good thing about the FDIC is that we are actually not as political as most other agencies. We're independent, which means we're not appropriated, so we actually pay for ourselves, so to speak. We don't go to Congress and pitch budgets every year. So we only have five political appointees in our corporation and they're all members of our board, three of which are appointed by Congress, and the other two are appointed but they're actually from the OCC. So the director of the OCC, which right now is the acting director, acting director Hsu, and then director Chopra from CFPB.

[00:16:45] Rebecca: So we work with our financial regulatory partners, and then we have three political folks that are there. How do I avoid it? My boss does a wonderful job of being amazing and insulating me from it, but there are times when they make me put on real adult clothes and go talk to the big, big people, who then tell me do X, do Y, do Z, and I'm like, all right, I'll get back to you. So they keep it pretty — the political environment is pretty negligible, to be honest, there.

[00:17:16] Host: Awesome. How do you encourage creativity in a highly regulated environment?

[00:17:22] Rebecca: Oh dang, I wish Jamie was here. My first UX design hire, he came to me from Facebook and he's brilliant, and I have tried to do nothing but continue to encourage creativity and put as little boundary as possible while giving requirements effectively. And then with my next two UX design hires I've done the same thing. My goal is basically to give baseline requirements and see what people come up with, because I want you to push the boundaries. That's what I want. We've been stuck in 2002 for so long, how do we get to 2019, you know? I'm just trying to get us there. Technologically speaking I can do it, but I've got to hire the smart people who know the things to get us the creative part. I'm just trying to get us there and I'm letting them do their work. I know what I know and I know what I don't know, let me be very honest about that.

[00:18:14] Host: No, that's leadership, you guys. With such a challenging environment, what makes you so passionate about working for the government?

[00:18:22] Rebecca: I kind of love this question. Okay, so I'm a nerd, I'll be honest. I love this question. I've been working for the federal government for 13 years, I've been at a couple of different agencies now, and what makes me so passionate about working for the federal government is that I'm mission driven. It's something bigger than myself. I'm not only helping a corporation, an agency, meet their mission and end goal, but in a very indirect way I am helping all of you by keeping your financial security safe and sound, by supporting that.

[00:19:01] Host: That's amazing, thank you.

[00:19:03] Rebecca: Yeah, so honestly, mission drives me, and I'm proud to be a federal employee. I really am.

[00:19:11] Host: Excellent. I think we have more questions. With so many layers of the business, how do you find the right person to route your needs and questions? We can skip.

[00:19:25] Rebecca: No, no, sorry, I wasn't listening because I was looking at the stars. Did somebody swear? They made me promise not to drop F bombs, so I didn't. Have you seen any patterns to be successful building relationships with huge, dot dot dot dot? I really love the blank, I don't know what the stars are. Have I seen patterns to be successful building relationships?

[00:19:49] Rebecca: Yeah, there's been quite a few different patterns. Most of them are, okay, let me go — so I got a list of people when I first started to go talk to, that would be key people that I could probably start with to get navigation points from. One of my first stops was in our security office, privacy and security, so that I could start getting any needed tools through that very arduous process. There's a lot of NIST regulatory controls that every federal agency has to abide by.

[00:20:22] Rebecca: So I first went and made friends with that guy. His name is Chris Van Buzer[?], he's a wonderful person, and I met with him one-on-one. We talked a little bit about work, talked a little bit about past history. He worked at DHS at one point, I also worked at DHS at one point, so, shared connection points. So basically, long story short, TL;DR: schedule the one-on-ones, the virtual coffees, introduce yourself, find some connection points. That point where two people can align is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, so that you can move forward. Now I Teams message him like once a week asking him questions about who to talk to for this, that or the other, and that's how I largely made it through my first year, is by building those relationships, like with him and others, and then moving forward.

[00:21:11] Host: Building relationships, yeah, it all comes back to that, definitely. Now, how do you secure budget, how do you secure funding, how do you keep your team motivated?

[00:21:22] Rebecca: Oh, that's a great question. How do I secure funding? So we are self-funded. I have to go and make my pitch to my bosses, who are wonderfully supportive, and then sometimes I will go and make the pitch further to our vice chair and our chairman if needed, which is part of our board, to basically say, here are the reasons why we need this. Sometimes I just come up and I show them my computer screen of our intranet, which literally — it is, it's a lie. As I mentioned 2002 earlier, this is like 1999.

[00:22:04] Rebecca: Each division — it's organized based on division and office, and not based on intuition. So if you're looking for benefits, that's in the division of administration. I didn't find that for the first three weeks that I was there. It's cool. But yeah, so sometimes I just go and show them a picture and I'm like, I need to make this better, please give me money. But I have some better talking points that are a little bit more appropriate and sophisticated. Oftentimes though, due to the fact that my bosses are very supportive, I don't have a large problem securing funding. So I'm sorry, that answer was kind of weak.

[00:22:43] Host: Yeah, jealous, jealous. Which question would you like to answer? I feel your struggle — I don't feel struggle here, I feel like she's really on it. She's, yeah, key successes, she accomplished already, way to go. Two open positions coming up, you guys, just saying. So, can you talk a bit more about what things you have done to show the value of UX?

[00:23:08] Rebecca: Yeah, actually this picture, pretty —

[00:23:11] Host: I don't think that's what you've done.

[00:23:12] Rebecca: It's not, it's not making a picture pretty. We've automated several processes to the point where, the half of fdic.gov that is in a content management system, we have increased the delivery time from 30 minutes to an hour, to about seven minutes. So that's pretty cool. And then we've also done a number of things with different applications across the corporation that work with or for bankers. We've done user research on our BankFind application, user research around our intranet that we're going to revamp. And yeah, that was a six-month ordeal, but the good thing that came out of it was a design system, and we're gearing up to implement that soon. So consistent look and feel, consistent experience across —

[00:24:01] Host: Oh, why do people get twitchy about CMSs?

[00:24:06] Rebecca: Ah, everybody's got opinions. To me it doesn't matter what CMS tool you're using, it's the implementation, because I have experienced really good implementations of some of the worst tools and really bad implementations of some of the best tools. With that being said, we're using Drupal, because it's open source, we can contribute back to the community, which I am a big proponent of, and it's easy to extend with all the contrib modules. So we went with Drupal due to the large data sets we're going to have to manipulate.

[00:24:36] Host: So, the person with the mouse: what went into creating a new design system, was there any research?

[00:24:43] Rebecca: Oh, stop moving the mouse, I'm trying to skip those.

[00:24:50] Host: No, no, you're good, I'm sorry, I'll read them out loud, I got you, fam. I'm that person, don't worry.

[00:24:56] Rebecca: No. There was a lot of research, actually. Not only did we talk to our top-line leadership, we talked to everyone, from all of our regional offices, all of our divisions, across teams, from top to bottom. We talked to entry level financial institution students who are just going to get their commission as a bank examiner. We talked to people who have been out in the field as IT people or supervisory examiners. We talked to our CIO, we talked to a number of people, literally top to bottom, across all regional offices, and we are a nationwide corporation, so we have six or eight regional offices. Our one in New York is actually in the Empire State Building. That's a fun fact.

[00:25:44] Rebecca: So a lot of research went into it, and then we used that research that we took and we compiled it, we created a design for FDICnet, and then from there we used all of that information to drive this design system. The color palette is a lot softer on the eyes than what we're getting in fdic.gov right now.

[00:26:06] Host: So you built the whole design based on users' needs, you did field research, you talked to everyone, you made sure the data is synthesized, all of it. And did I miss something, what's going on now? Any government websites that are doing it right, you believe? Any government?

[00:26:28] Rebecca: Oh, well, first, we do use USWDS, but it's a baseline, right? So USWDS, you can either use it as a baseline or you can adopt it wholeheartedly. But I have mixed feelings about it, in the idea that I do believe in presenting a consistent experience across government websites, I just don't want, like, DHS or USCIS, you know, I don't want Customs and Border Protection to look like NASA, and I'm pretty sure y'all don't either, right? So there's some leeway there that we have with the USWDS design system. But, oh, I missed the other one. Oh well, all right, dang.

[00:27:05] Host: Any question you wish they'd ask?

[00:27:08] Rebecca: No, I mean, I'm here to answer the questions y'all want. Scrolling is going real fast, dang, I don't know who's controlling this. I'm not a good dancer, but I can try.

[00:27:25] Host: Oh, you're — no, nice job, Rebecca. Give Rebecca a big round of applause.