NIC Inc.

Company & Product Context

When I joined NIC Pennsylvania, the organization mostly functioned as an IT services provider, focused on fulfilling contracts for state websites and payment portals. The work was technically competent but largely transactional; there was little emphasis on citizen experience, design standards, or service-level thinking. At the same time, public sentiment toward digital government services was often negative, driven by inconsistent interfaces, fragmented experiences, and accessibility gaps.

My remit was to shift NIC from a “vendor that runs websites” to a strategic partner in digital government, one that could lead on citizen experience, accessibility, and service design—first in Pennsylvania, then as a model for other states and federal partners.

Mandate & Leadership Scope

Formal role
As Head of Experience Design, I was responsible for building and leading the experience design function for NIC Pennsylvania, including UX, content, and service design for statewide digital services.

What I really did

• Worked with state partners and NIC leadership to define and execute a strategic transformation plan for government digital services, starting with a full service audit and a ten-point improvement plan.
• Built and scaled a design team (from 2 to 7) with structured onboarding and career frameworks, creating a sustainable practice rather than a heroic effort.
• Led the end-to-end product vision and launch of ExpressForms and the Pennsylvania Design Standards, both of which became foundational assets for the Commonwealth.
• Designed and championed an accessibility program that influenced statewide policy and talent decisions, including advising on the hiring of the first Chief Accessibility Officer.
• Extended impact beyond Pennsylvania by serving as design lead within a 50‑person, multi‑office federal initiative and helping replicate the Experience Design Practice model in 23 additional state teams.

Work Pillars

1. ExpressForms – A No-Code Platform for Government Services

Context
State agencies needed to launch forms and digital services quickly, but existing tools were fragmented or defunct. Many processes remained paper-based or required custom development, leading to long launch times, low completion rates, and heavy reliance on call centers for support.

What I led

• Conceived and led the experience design for ExpressForms, a no-code form-building platform that transformed a defunct federal system into a scalable solution for state agencies.
• Ran pilots with six agencies, refining UX, content, and configuration flows to support a broad range of use cases—from permit applications to event registrations.
• Designed ExpressForms to be framework-agnostic, allowing it to integrate with various backends and workflows, making adoption easier for agencies and vendors.

Impact

• In Pennsylvania, all state agencies adopted ExpressForms, standardizing how forms were created and managed.
• 11 additional states adopted ExpressForms for their partners, extending the platform’s impact beyond Pennsylvania.
• Achieved a 91% completion rate in pilot and 92% sustained completion rate at scale, with a 66% increase in completed online payments, indicating smoother, more effective digital services.
• Reduced time to launch a new form from around 10 days to approximately 15 minutes, dramatically increasing responsiveness and reducing reliance on IT resources.

Not every early pattern worked equally well across agencies; feedback from pilot partners helped us simplify some flows and better balance configuration power with ease of use.

2. Pennsylvania Design Standards – A Statewide Design System

Context
Before PDS, Commonwealth websites and applications had no common visual language, interaction patterns, or accessibility baseline. Citizens often couldn’t tell if a site was a legitimate government service because each agency and vendor designed in isolation. This fragmented experience undermined trust in digital services.

What I led

• Conducted a UI pattern audit across existing Commonwealth websites and services to identify inconsistencies, redundancies, and accessibility gaps.
• Defined the vision and roadmap for the Pennsylvania Design Standards (PDS) as a framework-agnostic, component-based design system using Atomic Design principles.
• Led a cross-functional team to deliver the initial PDS in 17 weeks, including:
  • Core UI components (buttons, forms, navigation, etc.)
  • Usage guidelines and examples
  • Accessibility guidance aligned with WCAG.
• Structured PDS so agencies and vendors could adopt components regardless of their backend technology stack, focusing on outcomes rather than tools.

Impact

• PDS became the first enterprise-wide design system for the Commonwealth and was later mandated for all state agencies under Governor Wolf’s executive order to improve digital customer experience.
• Improved visual and interaction cohesion across state services, making it easier for citizens to recognize official government sites and trust digital interactions.
• Provided a concrete foundation for later CX initiatives under Governor Shapiro (CODE PA), positioning design as central to digital government strategy.

3. Accessibility Program – From Compliance to Culture

Context
Accessibility was inconsistently understood and implemented across agencies. There was recognition that this needed to change, but no coherent program, leadership role, or shared practices were in place.

What I led

• Helped design and advocate for a Commonwealth‑wide accessibility program, integrating accessibility into design and development practices rather than treating it as an afterthought.
• Developed guidance, training, and standards that helped teams translate policy into day-to-day design and development decisions.
• Served on the advisory group for hiring the Commonwealth’s first Chief Accessibility Officer, interviewing candidates and making recommendations.
• Provided consulting and support to other NIC offices, helping them start or mature their own accessibility programs based on Pennsylvania’s model.

Impact

• Helped shift accessibility from a compliance checkbox to a core expectation of digital government work.
• Contributed, alongside policy and HR leaders, to the establishment and success of the Chief Accessibility Officer role.
• Extended the influence of accessibility practices beyond Pennsylvania, supporting NIC’s broader footprint.

4. Multi-Office Federal Program – U.S. Department of Commerce

Expanding the Experience Design Practice

Context
NIC had an opportunity to support a federally funded program for the U.S. Department of Commerce, designing and building a licensing and payment processing platform that would serve multiple departmental needs. This required coordination across offices, disciplines, and regulatory requirements.

What I led

• Acted as design lead within a 50‑person cross‑functional team spanning designers, engineers, and QA analysts across multiple NIC offices.
• Helped define and design the licensing and payment flows, ensuring they were compliant, understandable, and flexible enough for different departmental use cases.
• Instilled experience design practices and standards from Pennsylvania into the federal effort, creating continuity in how NIC approached government UX at different levels.

Impact

• Delivered a federal-scale platform capable of serving diverse licensing and payment needs, strengthening NIC’s reputation as a partner for both state and federal digital services.
• Demonstrated that the experience design principles and practices developed in Pennsylvania could scale to more complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

5. Experience Design Practice – A Replicable Model

Context
NIC Pennsylvania needed not only a strong central team, but a model for how experience design could be embedded into other state operations.

What I led

• Established an Experience Design Practice that offered content strategy audits, qualitative research programs, and strategic design consulting to state agencies.
• Partnered with other NIC offices to help launch 23 new teams modeled on the Pennsylvania practice, adapting to each state’s context while preserving core principles.
• Codified ways of working into a DesignOps Playbook, used both for onboarding and as a blueprint other NIC offices could adopt.

Impact

• Turned Pennsylvania’s experience design function into a reusable pattern for government UX teams.
• Increased NIC’s overall design maturity across states, not just within a single office.

Metrics & Outcomes Snapshot

• ExpressForms used by all Pennsylvania state agencies and 11 additional states, with 91–92% completion rates, a 66% increase in completed online payments, and time-to-launch reductions from ~10 days to ~15 minutes.
• Pennsylvania Design Standards delivered in 17 weeks, later mandated across all state agencies and used as a foundation for statewide CX initiatives.
• Acted as design lead within a 50‑person, multi‑office team to deliver a licensing and payment platform for the U.S. Department of Commerce.
• Experience Design Practice model replicated to 23 new teams in other state offices.

How NIC Shaped My Leadership

NIC was where I learned to practice systems-level design leadership in the public sector. I saw how design, when paired with policy and technology, can materially improve access, trust, and efficiency in government services. It stretched me to think beyond a single product: to platforms like ExpressForms, standards like PDS, and programs like accessibility and CX that alter how an entire ecosystem operates.

The experience reinforced my belief that design leadership is change leadership—aligning stakeholders, building new capabilities, and delivering measurable impact in complex, highly constrained environments. Those skills transfer directly into VP-level roles in SaaS and PLG: aligning multiple teams around a shared vision, building scalable platforms and standards, and proving that better experiences drive better outcomes for both organizations and the people they serve.