Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Designing essential financial services for those in need
Thursday, February 10, 2022 • Civic Design Community
Share the love for this talk
Designing essential financial services for those in need
Speakers: Alan Williams and Rose Deeb
Link:

Summary

Please join us at the next Civic Design Community call where you'll hear from Alan Williams, VP Design at Propel and Rose Deeb, Senior Content Designer. They'll walk us through their Providers application and share how they deliver essential financial services and tools to over 5 million families living with limited income who utilize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP) program. The Providers application provides participants in any state with timely, localized updates about changes to benefit allocations, and details about benefits that users may be eligible for but not yet aware of, all in plain language. https://www.joinpropel.com/

Key Insights

  • The Benefits Hub started as a hackathon project and rapidly evolved into a critical tool serving over 3 million monthly users.

  • Propel operates with a small, part-time team coordinating clearly defined roles to maintain and improve the Benefits Hub.

  • User engagement metrics, such as 4 visits per month per user, indicate high recurring use tied to timely benefit updates.

  • Benefits Hub content evolved from a bulky banner and a single scrolling page into a streamlined carousel and pillar pages with actionable calls to action.

  • Tracking direct benefit uptake post-referral is not possible, but click tracking and population-level data are utilized to inform updates.

  • Net Promoter Scores and qualitative feedback from approximately 20% of users provide actionable insights on content timeliness and specificity.

  • Marketplace partnerships are guided by strict principles prioritizing user financial benefit and avoiding click-maximizing incentives.

  • Categorical eligibility is leveraged to infer user access to related government benefits with minimal user data collection.

  • Timely publication of policy updates requires close collaboration with government stakeholders and ongoing community engagement.

  • Iterative, data-driven improvements like CMS templating and layout standardization have enhanced content consistency and UX.

Notable Quotes

"Benefits information really complex. Making them accessible is god's work in effect."

"We launched the Benefits Hub in just a few days during a hackathon at the start of the pandemic."

"Three million people access this information through the Benefits Hub every month, often multiple times."

"It takes a village to maintain the Benefits Hub with clear roles and responsibilities among a part-time team."

"Users want answers to urgent benefit questions but also opportunities to explore other programs they might qualify for."

"Our content must be concise, consistent, and actionable to reduce uncertainty for users."

"We can't track actual benefit uptake after users click through to official government sites, only clicks and visits."

"About 20% of users shown our Net Promoter Score survey provide written feedback that can be analyzed for improvements."

"Marketplace partners have to demonstrably save people money, aligning with Propel’s mission."

"Categorical eligibility allows us to communicate benefit access without asking for personal data directly."

Ask the Rosenbot
Natalia Radywyl
Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Anna Avrekh
Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Kim Lenox
Leading Distributed Global Teams
2019 • Enterprise Community
Kristin Wisnewski
Measuring What Matters
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Sam Proulx
Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Kristin Skinner
Five Years of DesignOps
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Ivana Ng
Level Up Your Program with ProductOps
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Mike Oren
Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Patrizia Bertini
Pushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Ignacio Martinez
Fair and Effective Designer Evaluation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Cartography for Design Communities
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Maish Nichani
Sparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Cornelius Rachieru
Handling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Veevi Rosenstein
Building for Scale: Creating the Zendesk UX Research Practice
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Rima Campbell
Increase Productivity and Drive Business Impact
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Wendy Johansson
Design at Scale: Behind the Scenes
2021 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Brad Peters

"When it comes to the data we’re providing, that decision point is really important for PMs."

Brad Peters Anne Mamaghani

Short Take #1: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers

December 6, 2022

Lona Moore

"Rituals symbolize community identity and shared values, helping scale human-centered habits across boundaries."

Lona Moore

Scaling Design Beyond Designers

June 11, 2021

Josh Clark

"Typing prompts is not the UX of the future. Integration into the interactive context where you work is better."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)

January 15, 2025

Erin May

"Being involved early in product planning lets us bring the art and science of research to where it can be most helpful."

Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke Hinton

Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org

March 10, 2022

Tara Tressel

"When I gave the model my list of interview questions, it actually made for a really bizarre participant experience because the model just went down the line of the different questions."

Tara Tressel

Investigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews

March 10, 2026

Charles Lee

"It's really about finding a way to link all the different aspects to bring everything together to tell the story."

Charles Lee Jennie Yip

Building a New Home for the Atlassian Design System

October 22, 2020

Kristin Skinner

"We are not replacing teachers; we are enhancing their ability to teach effectively."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Megan Blocker

"If you see a problem or opportunity, you should do something about it."

Megan Blocker

Getting to the “So What?”: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research

March 26, 2024

Shanti Mathew

"Designers hope to support the public in exercising agency and redistribute hegemonic power in public services."

Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia Radywyl

Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake

December 9, 2021