Human-Centered Design (HCD) is the process we use to understand the people for whom we are writing policies and creating programs and services for at CMS. The successful practice of HCD means we are meeting the mission of CMS: "to ensure that the voices and needs of the populations we represent are present as the agency is developing, implementing, and evaluating its programs and policies." HCD can be applied to any type of work at CMS, including products, services, and even policy.

Following the six-step HCD process that we use at CMS, the training workshop will introduce you to HCD and reinforce knowledge with activity-based group learning.

Understanding your customers is foundational to human-centered design (HCD). How do you create a shared understanding of your customers across a team and leverage customer research? Personas, a fictitious yet realistic representation of your target customers, can help you do just that.

During this online training, attendees will learn the benefits of using personas to drive creativity in their roles at CMS or the HCQIS Community. They will finish the course with the skills needed to use personas to develop empathy for their customers and power ideation for product features and customer experience improvements.

After completing the training, the learner will understand what a persona is and why we use them, experience the creative process using personas for empathy and ideation, and understand practical uses of personas in product development.

Human-centered design (HCD) practices should be applied iteratively throughout a product’s development and delivery lifecycle, even after functionality has been released. When working towards continuous improvement, site analytics tools can help you gather both qualitative and quantitative usability data and make informed iterative improvements.

During this online, two-hour training, attendees will learn how site analytics can help teams improve the design and functionality of product solutions. They will finish the course with the skills to use common site analytics tools to improve customer satisfaction.

Understanding the customers’ holistic experience with CMS can help you identify both customer pain points and opportunities for improving the customer experience. Journey maps, a commonly used human-centered design (HCD) tool, create empathy by depicting the customers’ perspective as they interact with different touchpoints throughout their experience with CMS. 

During this online, four-hour training, attendees will learn how journey maps can be a useful human-centered design tool. They will finish the course with the skills to create and use a journey map to communicate insights, engage cross-department team members, and provoke change through the findings in this tool.   

Surveys are one of the most frequently used methods of collecting information from a group of people. Yet perhaps because we’ve taken so many surveys throughout our lives, it’s easy to discount the rigor and planning necessary to gain meaningful information. 

During this online, two-hour training, attendees will learn about a survey life cycle, general guidelines, best practices in survey design, and how to avoid common problems while gaining insights into this popular research method. They will finish the course with the skills to create surveys following a seven-step process including how to define goals, write straightforward questions, and obtain accurate and meaningful results.