I conceived and launched Cohorts, a service of Ad Hoc that allows us to conduct incisive research with groups of relevant people to make government digital services work better for all.
Here’s some snips from the launch blog post:
There are two components to Cohorts — finding the right people and conducting the right research.
On the people side, we have a system for recruiting, managing, and rewarding Cohorts members. The software we built is based on the Kimball project from the Smart Chicago Collaborative. My Ad Hoc colleague Chris Gansen and I created Kimball back in 2012 to support the launch of the CUTGroup, which was a new model for UX testing, digital skills development, and community engagement in civic tech. We forked the code for Kimball, modified it for Cohorts, and re-published it as open source.
On the research side, Cohorts is at the center of our growing user research practice. Our full-time researchers, along with our partners and clients, conduct interviews with Americans all over the country about broad topics like veterans and their health, clinicians and quality measures, and specific interface questions around the text on a login screen. We do this work in the context of large projects for our existing clients, and we also offer smaller, research-only engagements.