If you're dedicated to equitable design, we want you to join us as we establish a Lab team based at the District Department of Transportation (DDOT)!
We're launching The Lab @ DDOT!
For the past 8 years, The Lab @ DC has served District government agencies as an internal research and design team housed in the Office of the City Administrator. The Lab @ DC is a curious, service-oriented group of civic design researchers, social scientists, and data scientists. We approach our projects in four ways, often used in combination to maximize impact and make the most of our learning opportunities: randomized evaluations; predictive modeling; civic design; and administrative data analysis.
This year, we are launching a new branch of The Lab—The Lab @ DDOT—to deliver user-friendly services and evidence-based policies to help residents, commuters, and visitors get around the District. The team will be led by a seasoned Lab veteran, and staffed with a Data Scientist, Social Scientist, and a Civic Design Researcher. The Lab @ DDOT will have a close working relationship with The Lab @ DC.
The Lab’s Civic Design Work
Our Civic Design Researchers understand that service delivery requires rigorous research, skilled design, iteration, meaningful community engagement, and careful implementation. None of these activities is neutral. Whether government is creating an application form for a residential disability parking permit or experimenting with a new program to support e-bike purchases, government is projecting its values. Government is removing or putting up barriers to service and honoring or diminishing a resident’s personhood. Our civic design team supports agencies in recognizing this power and guides collaboration and design to ensure equitable outcomes for all Washingtonians. Learn more about our resident-centered design methods and projects.
What you'll do
- Contribute to DDOT’s empathetic human-centered design approach to projects of limited scope that promote equitable services for all District residents, commuters, and visitors. This means prototyping, testing, and iterating on DDOT services by considering their needs, motivations, and pain points.
- Foster a culture that infuses civic design, community engagement, and user-testing best practices into the core of how DDOT delivers work.
- Help project teams make the design process accessible to non-designers and brings DDOT staff and community stakeholders along to approach problem solving from a human-centered design and evaluation perspective.
- Support conversations with residents, commuters, and visitors to better understand the problems DDOT faces and to get feedback on possible solutions.
- Collaboratively develop and implement reasonable project plans with clear deliverables, milestones, and deadlines for on-time completion.
- Effectively communicate about DDOT projects to a diverse audience, including scientific experts, government practitioners, residents, and policymakers.
- Design and implement new collaborative procedures and workflows that promote clarity about the status of work.
- Follow guidance to ensure that your own work products adhere to open science best practices and protect confidential data.
- Identify and work with others to navigate through ambiguity and project challenges.
- Proactively provide ideas and critical feedback—as well as being open to such constructive dialogue—as part of constantly improving DDOT and its collective work output.
- Help to disseminate lessons, tools, and best practices across DDOT and District government.
What we're looking for
The ideal candidate will have all of the following skills and experience:
- A Master’s degree OR equivalent work experience in design research, service design, public policy, urban design, behavioral science, business, public administration, management, sociology, or other relevant field.
- Thorough knowledge in design research, service design, research project management, management consulting, or similar fields. An entrepreneurial spirit to seamlessly embed a new team within an existing organization.
- Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to develop and maintain relationships with a range of government agencies and staff.
- Ability to handle multiple things at once in a fast-paced environment.
- Experience developing and deploying performance measures that empower accurate, timely project completion.
- Ability to synthesize and analyze qualitative data (interviews, observations, review of primary documents, etc.), quantitative data, and research literature to help craft solutions to problems.
- Strong communication skills and ability to facilitate meetings with stakeholders to gather and convey insights to improve how DDOT services all District residents, commuters, and visitors.
- Strong public service orientation and enthusiasm for applying civic design to improve the performance of government and the transportation system.
- Willing to work in-person at 250 M Street SE in Washington, DC four days a week.
The ideal candidate would bring at least one of these criteria to their work:
- Past experience working with or in government.
- Enthusiasm for transportation policy.
What else you need to know
- The salary range for this position is $80k-103k.
- The Civic Design Researcher will be an employee of DDOT.
Our application process
- Apply at careers.dc.gov by November 1, 2024. Search for position #27934.
- Select candidates will be given about two weeks to complete a performance task which helps us get a sense of your skills and fit for the role. We anticipate this being in November.
- A smaller group of select candidates will then be invited to interview virtually. We anticipate this being in December.
- We hope to make an offer by January.