NJ OneApp Redesign

Problem

With a surge of applicants during the pandemic, it became clear that the social safety net benefit application process was cumbersome, at best. States are responsible for administering benefits, including designing the application process. Often times, this means paper forms are made into an online application process, without thinking of the critical differences in applicant experience between paper and in-person applications and doing it themselves online.

Solution

In June 2020, USDS worked with the state of New Jersey's Department of Human Services (DHS) to redesign NJ OneApp, New Jersey's online application for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and General Assistance (GA).

Our focus was on plain language and designing a user friendly application process, to reduce burden on applicants while providing case workers with the most accurate information possible to start and process benefit applications.

We worked towards delivering a "Quick Start" MVP., focusing on the bare minimum information an applicant must provide to start an application, legally.

Process

USDS set out to improve the overall application experience through accessible language and a mobile-first design approach, in order to reduce time and burden on applicants while providing case workers with the most accurate information to process benefits claims.

I led user research with NJ OneApp applicants, sourced through the online application while we were conducting our work with New Jersey.

As our team was redesigning the application and speaking with users, I realized there was no documentation of the existing product, mapping critical information such as application form fields to the back-end database to legal requirements. As part of this work, I conducted a comprehensive audit of all of the fields in the existing platform, in order to ensure a user friendly, seamless migration to the redesigned application.

Outcome

Ultimately the redesign our team worked on was not implemented. In December 2020, USDS paused the effort when New Jersey's DHS was awarded a grant from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). USDS handed off our work to the vendor New Jersey was partnering with.

This project was completed while I was working at the US Digital Service.