Client: | Truss, San Francisco |
Dates: | March – April 2020 |
Skills/Subjects: | civic media, interaction design, research, UI design, usability |
URL: | https://sf.gov/apply-building-permit |
When COVID-19 closures started in early 2020, San Francisco was unable to accommodate emergency construction for housing. In just four weeks, we put their building permitting process online!
My fellow Trussels Liz Lin, Namibia Torres, Carla Silvey, Jim Benton, and I worked shoulder to shoulder with the San Francisco Digital Services (SFDS) team to make this happen, from research to rapid prototyping to a production release. I contributed primarily to the research, design, and testing of the forms in addition to some content and light front end development. About a year later, one of our SFDS counterparts—Bekah Otto—wrote about this work (partly) in “How to make a form.”
Research
In March 2020, there was a massive scramble for information in San Francisco, including how to continue doing normal things like filing permits.


[more details forthcoming]