Anthony Lyons is the City Manager for Gainesville, Florida, where he is leading the local government through an effort to become more citizen-centered by focusing on user experience.   When Gainesville began this citizen-centered redesign, the first focus was on making it easier to start a business in the city, hence the creation of the

Michelle Thong is a service designer, storyteller and facilitator. As Digital Services Lead for the City of San Jose, she’s leading the introduction of user-centered, iterative approaches to help her fellow public servants deliver better services to San Jose’s 1 million residents and 60,000 businesses.   “Where do we start?” This is the question staring

In January of 2018, the New York City Service Design Studio launched “Designing for Opportunity,” a competition to select the next city department to work with the Studio on a design project. The Commons’ Emma Coleman visited the Studio to learn more.   “We had to go through a special procurement process just for these,”