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"Governments are both the biggest decision-makers in the world and the biggest purchasers in the world. By tackling procurement, we identified a lever that, when pulled, can improve millions, if not billions of lives. We estimate that 80% of the world governments lack effective processes and tools to effectively leverage their resources and serve their citizens" - Paola Santana, Social Glass
Complex & outdated processes of public procurement characterized by non-intuitive user flows and interfaces, poor performance visibility, and repetitive manual implementation by specialized government workers. This complexity has led to inefficiency affecting all public procurement transactions across agencies, especially micro-purchasing. When aggregated, micro-purchases represent approximately $150 Billion in the United States market.
We decided on a multiple prong approach to tackle such a large problem. We began by creating Glass COMMERCE a global e-commerce platform optimized for fast, fully compliant, and paperless government micro-purchases (office supplies, daily needs, emergency items, etc). We had two goals in mind with this first product; to help simplify procurement activities for government workers, and also to reduce the barriers of entry into government markets for legitimate businesses. We then created Glass LOCAL to emphasize procurement from local businesses, Glass QUOTES to speed up government bidding, and Glass LABS, a Government-Exclusive Innovation Laboratory & Incubator.
We decided to that our solution needed to have:
The main difference between designing for private and public sector is the audience. For example, in e-commerce you will normally have a lot of research that tells you exactly who you’re designing for and the types of things they are looking to do on your platform. For government workers, that audience isn’t a certain age group or gender or anything that narrow. That audience is massive, millions of people. The sheer size of that user group and their different backgrounds means we have to design for everyone, which can be difficult, but also ensures we’re inclusive in our design. Finally, I would say the scope of each public sector project can be challenging. Most of the time, I think I understand the complexities of a project only to realize as I keep digging that it’s so much more intricate than I originally thought.
Each government entity has a very specific set of requirements, and whether due to legal obligations or the procurement process, these requirements tend to be less flexible than in the private sector. This makes it especially challenging to design a scalable product that can work for all of our clients. Designing for the government has also been a refreshing return to the basic principles of design. Our clients aren’t necessarily interested in chasing down the next big thing in tech; instead, they’re focused on things like accessibility, intuitive navigation, and plain language — in other words, the foundations of a good user experience for the most people.
Because we are designing for such a massive number of users, we needed to go back to basics and design an entirely inclusive procurement pipeline. We created a system where a government employee can complete a purchase in a few simple steps; search, sort, checkout, and track. We inherited and adopted UX best practices from e-commerce statistics and methodologies and combined them with government compliance, prior verification, and security needed for our government clients to feel confident in the purchases that they are making.
Government bids can be a tricky part of the process, as the process is outdated, often involving non-digitized methods or outdated contracts which ends up being time-consuming for the procurement officer. We created Glass QUOTES to speed up this process, and can be used in tandem with our marketplace to help increase successful micro-purchases.
In order to account for the massive amount of users, we initially knew that we needed to include additional payment options other than Debit/Credit transactions so we included options for wire transfers, government checks, and P-card purchases. Due to the procurement processes and regulations of many agencies, some procurement managers across the US are not allowed to pay for a product until they have received it. We added this functionality after receiving this feedback as well. We paid careful attention to the process of entering in payment information, and confirmation after submitting payment.
According to the Glass brand guidelines that I created, the design system is centered around the idea of a prism, with each product representing a piece of the rainbow light denoted by a strong color. The products are to appear friendly, modern, and fresh. We decided to go with Poppins for the typeface because its nearly mono-linear circular forms give it a clean, futuristic feel while the curves still give it a sense of friendliness and ease.
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Used to help empathize with vendors and and government users.
As COMMERCE is a closed government marketplace and I am under NDA agreement, there are a limited number of designs that I am legally allowed to display as stipulated by my employment contract. Please contact me if you are interested in seeing additional screens.
Each local government is different and has different needs. When people think of government, I think they often think of it as this monolith of sameness, when in reality each local government has different agencies, procedures, and needs. That’s a long way of saying one size definitely does not fit all. With each implementation project, we have to take into consideration the specific needs of the government we’re working with and what gaps we need to bridge to make our product successful for that client.
We then released a version of Glass Commerce specifically for local governments, allowing them to partner with us to launch their own "storefront" featuring products from small businesses within their jurisdiction. We also provided additional filters for for women-owned, Black-owned, eco-friendly, and minority-owned businesses.
So far, Commerce has grossed over $12.3 Million in sales and has served a variety of government agencies at the state, local, and even federal level. COMMERCE's clients include the city of Seattle, Pierce County, Berkeley Lab, IEMA, SERT, Richmond, Contra Costa County, St. George University, and others. Over 3 million products have been delivered thus far.
There are more plans in the future for COMMERCE to make it easier for governments to purchase from Black, Women-Owned, Minority-Owned, and Environmentally-Friendly businesses through badges, highlights, filtering, and other modifications to the platform. The redesign is scheduled to launch this quarter.
