Digitizing Paper-Based USCIS Forms

Role: Interaction Designer
Agency: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - SPEED Contract
Tools: Adobe XD, Jira, Confluence, Mural
Team: Multi-disciplinary agile team (Designers, researchers, content specialists, front and back-end developers, PMs, stakeholders)
Timeline: June 2022 - April 2023

Brief & Overview

USCIS, a critical agency under the DHS, relies on numerous complex paper-based forms to process immigration requests. These forms are often long, difficult to navigate and prone to user errors that result in rejections, delays and increased administrative burden. As part of an ongoing modernization effort, I worked as one of several embedded Interaction Designers focused on digitizing these legacy paper forms into user-friendly, accessible web-based experiences. My team’s challenges was to rethink how complex, legalistic questions - orginally intended for static documents - could be seamlessly translated into intuitive digital workflows.

 

As an interaction Designer on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract supporting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), I was embedded within a development-heavy agile team tasked with improving the user experience across internal tools and public-facing digital services.

My Responsibilities fell into three key areas:

  • Design: Creating wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity interfaces that aligned with USCIS standards and accessibility requriements.

  • Research: Supporting and synthesizing user research to ensure our solutions addressed real user needs and pain points.

  • Developer Collaboration & QA: Acting as the design point-of-contact within the sprint - answering UX-related questions, clarifying design intent, and reviewing implemented features to ensure design fidelity and accessibility compliance.


This role required adaptability, clear communication, and a balance between strategic design thinking and practical implementation support in a highly regulated, mission-critical environment.

Problem & Goals

Goals:

  • Make form experiences clearer, faster, and less error-prone

  • Ensure compliance with Section 508 accessibility standards

  • Reduce rejection rates and user frustrations

  • Enable support for developer handoff

Problems with Paper Based Systems:

  • Ambiguous or legalistic language confusing users

  • No real-time validation or help - leading to errors and rejection

  • Manual proccessing and longer wait times

  • accessibility and usability limitations

 
 

My Role:

I serve as one of the primary Interaction Designers for one of the product teams (development teams). My contributions spanned 3 major areas:

  1. User Research - Supporting moderated usability studies and analyzing user feedback to optimize how questions were worded and presented.

  2. UX Design - Creating low to high-fidelity wireframes, interaction flows, and component behaviors for complex form logic.

  3. Developer Support and QA - Working closely with front-end developers to ensure faithful implementation, clarifying UX behaviors, and reviewing quality throughout the sprint lifecycle.

 
 
 

Research & Discovery

After identifying which forms took priority via stakeholder instructions, we began with a deep audit of said priority existing paper form(s). We worked with SME s and stakeholders to understand:

  • The intent behind each field or question

  • historical rejection reasons

  • patterns of confusion across user groups

We conducted user interviews and usability tests to identify:

  • Which sections were consistently misunderstood

  • how people interpreted complex legal or relic terminology

  • what information users needed to proceed with confidence.

 
 

UX & UI Design

I designed modular digital form components that could accommodate:

  • conditional logic (e.g. showing fields only when relevant)

  • inline help and tooltips (to reduce confusion)

  • progressive disclosure (to avoid overwheliming users)

  • visual cues for required fields and error handling

  • Example of enhancements:

    • (turned “other (explain)” text fields into guided inputs)

    • broke long forms into logical multi-step flows

    • reworded questions to clarify using plain language

  • Design artifacts included:

    • Low fidelity wireframes for early feedback

    • High fidelity prototypes for stakeholder demos

    • Continual communication and annotated specs for Dev handoff

 
 

Developer collaboration & QA

Because I was embedded within an agile team, I partcipated in:

  • Daily standups to address design progress, bring up any blockers, or address implementation gaps

  • Design QA reviews to ensure pixel-perfect and behavior- accurate delivery

  • Sprint planning and retrospectives to advocate for UX debt resolution, advocate for UX work, and to voice plan accordingly to ensure a smooth sprint

I acted as a bridge between design and development, often clarifying interaction logic, validating UI behaviors, and collaborated with 508 testers to ensure/support accessibiltiy testing.

Outcome & Impact

While many of these projects are ongoing or under continuous iteration, key wins included:

  • Clearer design documentation for developers, reducing back-and-forth and rework

  • Faster implementation cycles takes to embedded UX support

  • Hearing feedback from users that they appreciate all the efforts the UX team puts in to put usability at the forefront of these applications.

Reflections

This project sharpened my ability to design within constraints - legal, technical and accessibility-related - while still advoating for the user. I learned to:

  • Balance user needs with compliance requirements

  • collaborate cross-funcitonally with large distributed teams

  • think critically about the nuances of form design and its real-world impact on immigration processes (Designing for government systems means optimizing not just for usability, but for clarity, equity, and trust.)