Why do we need the project "Design of state systems"
Hi, Habr! Today we decided to share with the community a text version of one of the releases of the podcast "Metric", in which we talked about the work on the project " Design of State Systems ".
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Alina Testova: Today we are talking about the project “Design of state systems”. How did he appear? How did you get the idea? To you, this is the union of the Artem Geller Laboratory and other companies that have joined this project. Why did you decide to create this project?
Artem Geller: Good afternoon. First, I want to clarify: [the project is created] not by companies, but by people from these and many other companies. The story is not new. Any large system tends to streamline. The state is no different from companies such as Google, Apple or any other large company that provides its services and services on the Internet.
It seeks to unify, standardize interfaces, reduce costs, and more to the many topics that we will discuss. In any case, we will come to this now or in 30 years. And it will be absolutely natural.
Alina: It was an initiative of the specific people involved in the process. They came together to create a project that solves certain issues of services for the state. Why did the need arise?
Artem: There are many reasons. We, the professionals, are familiar with each other, spinning and communicating in the same environment, we are doing government projects. At some point, we realized that the development process can be significantly cheaper.
If we take a cut of federal resources, according to the estimates of the experts we attracted, the state spends about 10 billion rubles a year. All this can be streamlined, clarified, to create a library of components that developers will use. The first goal that the project decides is finance, the second is a single interface, a unique state ecosystem that will not need to be retrained.
Now people go to sites and every time they retrain on a new resource: the user experience changes, the interface changes, the colors change, everything jumps and jumps, it happens well, it happens badly. We make a single ecosystem to which people will get used. It will be technological, functional, convenient and always relevant, because it is the development of a standard or guidelines.
The process is not static - it was developed and completed, but dynamic - a new one appears, the old one changes. We conduct it as openly as possible so that people can work on any components of which there are many, from fonts to interface elements, analytics. If you take any stage of web development, we communicate on it with experts, with the guys from the industry and with people who are interested in improving the state.
Additional reading: On the creation of Kremlin.ru and work with the presidential administration
Alina: It turns out the bidirectional process. On the one hand, when a person comes to the company, they [also] are shown what company’s fonts, icons, corporate colors are used in, and advise him to use all this in presentations, texts, materials, to assemble as from a designer.
Artem: This practice is also common in large companies, because they have long understood the brand advantage. The state is a brand. The state is more and more perceived through its services and websites, which is why a single identification is needed so that a person, opening an application, launching any website, no matter the website of the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Sports, understands that he is communicating with the state.
The site must be understandable, convenient and must be identified with the state resource. I would like the federal level to appear later, and the regional and municipal levels should be covered with one big resource with their own subprojects. The state does not differ from Yandex in its presentation on the web.
Alina: You are creating a “brand book for the state” in terms of how it will be presented [a network]. And from the point of view of internal processes for development.
Artem: A very important point is that the brand book is not so much visual, we are still on the Internet. He and technology. We will describe other things as well: analytics, work with security on resources, how to write texts correctly, how to communicate information and services to citizens.
There are many such moments, we are trying to make methodological recommendations for them. There is global experience, and, guided by it, we can do much better, at least in my picture of the world.
Alina: In a conversation, it sounded that all this is necessary not only for end users, who will receive a single interface, a common understanding of how to work with different government resources, but also for developers. Are there many companies that develop for the state?
Artem: The market is quite large. The current statistics includes about a hundred companies that want to move in this segment, care about their reputation, and carry out public activities.
The number of companies that periodically engage in public resources is estimated at several hundred. If you take the municipal companies, which rarely do government projects, the market will grow to thousands of companies.
Alina: Listeners need to understand that government sites, resources for the state are not one giant single site, the only company has won a tender for the development of a company, and now it does everything. These are both municipal and city sites, considering how many divisions, cities, republics, regions, [such sites] we have - a huge amount.
Artem: The nature of the sites is different. On the one hand, we are talking about service resources like public services, on the other hand, we are talking about sites that talk about the activities of the department. These are websites of ministries and departments that should be service.
We are also talking about state promotional projects. For example, a search for investments for a region is a commercial-oriented site, focused on big business, which can inject funds into projects in this region. The region represents itself in this market. There are many sites, they are “fighting” as well as commercial projects. The only thing is no state stores.
Alina: Suppose there is some company that is developing a website for a conditional regional unit. Can the designer of this company somehow integrate into your community, and not so much from you learn something, some interesting insight or analytics, but somehow assist in the development of these new standards, in creating something new?
Artem: We are as open as possible. We have a blog, Telegram-chat , Telegram-channel , we set tasks for the guys in Trello . In our group in Facebook more than two thousand people. We openly communicate on various issues and problems. And there are real examples when people are connected to certain tasks.
There are people who have joined in the finalization of the eagle for the screens. The eagle is the emblem of Russia, which we did for the president’s site. There are people who are now specifying the boundaries of the map in the SVG, in order to optimize it and it loaded quickly, was as relevant and accurate as possible, and also occupied a minimum of space when loading - the traffic was not wasting.
Now we are launching the guide's website, where we will publish all the components. All components, from the button to the font, we will discuss in the community, everything that we do, we bring to the public. We recently started work on the font, there are already several posts about it. We collected and analyzed comments. There are people who are also interested, they are present at our discussions of this process. So it was with all the components that already exist.
Additional reading: Who we are and how we work together
Alina: People can not just see, but to participate.
Artem: The difficulty is that we cannot understand what pool of tasks we can give to such a volume of people. We know that a certain Ivan is the best in identity, someone is the best in typography. But it is difficult for us to distribute tasks to the mass of people, therefore, usually those who come with the initiative “from the bottom up” connect, that is, they offer us something - we agree.
Everything we do is free. Everything lies on GitHub. We did for the state what it should have done long ago. We have developed the Kremlin [website kremlin.ru], the website of the Council of Federations, the website of the Government. We distribute the components of state resources. Their current versions are on GitHub, there are all our developments that may be of interest to the developer.
Alina: There is an opinion that cool specialists first of all go to commercial companies, high-profile projects: Yandex, Mail.ru, Google, Apple. How many such powerful, tough specialists are working on public services? Are there any stars of design, typography, usability, UX in this topic?
Artem: 5-6 years ago there was a turning point when all my familiar directors of design studios, advertising agencies, creative agencies began to meet with me periodically and figure out how to get into this niche and how profitable it was to start working with the public sector. Now all the major studios in the top ten by rating, and large companies engaged in web development, have projects related to the state.
Someone does projects for Moscow, like the Red Keds, someone does a little different, but also for Moscow, like Notamedia. Someone is doing for state services, like AIC, someone is for federal departments, like us. In the top ten sites there are certain government projects.
Alina: Why did such an interest appear? People began to realize that these are complex and ambitious tasks, or has the prestige of this area increased? Or something else?
Artem: There are many factors here. There is also the prestige of the direction, people have seen that you can do well and receive from this important loyalty from the professional community. There is a financial moment, because the state - most often stable money, and with commerce happens in different ways.
I left commerce because I was tired of making sites for companies like Danone. I wanted social significance. When employees understand that they are doing a resource for themselves, their parents, they are immersed in work, they realize that they have an incentive.
Alina: It turns out that design studios become more socially responsible when they join government projects.
Artem: It all depends on people. But when you reach a certain level, and we are talking about strong, strong companies, you cross the line beyond which social importance becomes important to you. First, you do for someone, but all the time you raise the bar until you reach the bar “I want to improve the whole world.”
Now - this is the “I want to improve my state” plank. So good projects are born. Strong, good projects more and more, and it ceased to embarrass people. If earlier they secretly met me, they spoke quietly, but now it is a public topic, no one is embarrassed about it. I think this sector has a great future.
Alina: It has ceased to be a little embarrassing, but on the contrary - it became interesting.
Artem: Real professionals began to take away some of the work (design, design) from those who previously could not, could not, but somehow did those same government projects. Therefore, we see more and more good projects. I love it.
Alina: [Professionals take away part of the work of those who] did the very thing “malachite on gold, gold on malachite”?
Artem: Maybe [for those who] used to do not very beautiful and comfortable, functional things.
Alina: To what extent is the state a complex customer in terms of requirements, needs, taste?
Artem: In my picture of the world, the state customer is no different from a commercial one. I used to say that it was easier to work with the state. Over the 7 years that I have been involved in government projects, my opinion has changed: not simpler, but also.
There are different people, teams of people, different departments, press services, but in every project we do, there are one or several people on the client’s side who are ready to give everything so that this resource is good. It motivates me a lot: they fight within their corporate state culture, bureaucracy. They are fighting for good decisions, and not for "the boss said - you do."
Alina: It would seem that people from outside have an idea of ​​state projects as very inflexible, bureaucratic. It turns out that there are also people from the customer’s side who are ready to contribute, help, change projects for the better.
Artem: Yes, they sometimes risk their careers, cursing with their superiors, trying to explain that this is correct, convenient, accessible, and this is more important to us than the option proposed from above. There must always be strong arguments. In my experience of communicating with people, if you have sufficiently serious arguments, then your decision will be made by state officials, if there are no good arguments, then you yourself are not right about something.
Alina: Another moment, perhaps, is the myth about working with the state or the state: when it comes to developing, creating something, there are suspicions that for all of this GOSTs have already been made, and within the framework of these GOSTs you cannot go anywhere - creativity from government projects do not have to. How do GOSTs define your work? How many of them need to be finalized in order to get the standards that were mentioned at the very beginning?
Artem: Standards with guests are a bit unrelated. If we talk about web development, website developers or not too complicated services, they are not burdened with anything, there is a federal law about what should be published on state resources, this is all. For security, information security has its own GOSTs, licenses. Security companies have them.
The state unexpectedly gives us the opportunity, I will tell on the example of an eagle. There is a presidential decree on how the eagle should look. Everyone has a feeling that it can not be changed, but any person, a designer can draw his own eagle, he must follow only a few requirements.
Exaggerated: there should be crowns on the heads of eagles, in the right hand it should be, in the left hand it should be. Further the question of stylization is not regulated, therefore any illustrator, designer can make it in his own opinion. We managed to do it for the screens. Although when this idea arose, they thought that it was somehow regulated, and we could not do anything with it. We can.
Alina: Do you want to make this eagle exactly the standard for different sites?
Artyom: We want to make it an open standard so that any person on GitHub or any other free platform where you can add your innovations or changes can make a useful contribution to the quality of the output.
If a person succeeds, exaggerates, corrects the coordinates of a region, or corrects an eagle foot, do better than we did, we accept it. Now everyone will have this eagle with the right foot. This applies to all components: typography, interface elements, distance, indents, grids, basic things, technical principles, style of working with people, working with text. In all you can participate.
Additional reading: State interface and user interaction scenarios
Alina: It turns out that the standards that the design of state systems is working on are not just strict guidelines. This is an active platform for continuous improvement, improvement of the quality of what the state system can offer to its users.
Artem: There are two things: guidelines and principles. Guidelines - this is what we recommend to do. Principles are a philosophy, an understanding of processes, how to work with citizens of a state.
We have to fix ourselves in something in order to build on this and move. We have to decide on the platform, and then work on the exterior. It all starts with the basic - project management: information management, scaling, principles, efficiency, launching alpha and beta versions of projects, collecting feedback from users, processing and reacting to it.
The standard covers the development process itself: principles, security, licensing, setting up and testing servers, accessibility, API, open by the state, planned release issues. Design standards are focused on citizens for solving problems of a unified identity, graphical interface, icons, pictograms.
A very important point - accessibility for people with disabilities who are not concerned about many government resources. Or, at least, what they have done is a profanation. This is the correct, convenient data visualization, design patterns, so that designers from other companies can follow it, free state font - now the state can use only free system fonts. There are times when designers need fonts, and they begin to spend public money to buy fonts, technologies, and analytics.
As a result, we want to get a single interface of citizen-state interaction.With a set of standards, we will improve the quality of public resources, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, improve readability - we will no longer meet small fonts "gray over gray."
In our work, we, first of all, try to solve the tasks of citizens, rather than engage in styling. This will be the interface for correct and fast work, not a styling game. We want to make a single center of analytics and competence, so that you can ask a question and see how it is right, so that the customer or the developer can understand whether it is moving in the right direction.
Developers will be able to take all sorts of components. This project will increase the level of transparency in the development of the authorities in this segment of the network everything will be open. As we communicate with all representatives of the industry, the important point is that the result will be accepted by the professional community, for the most part.
The community objectively sees bad resources, scolds them, and everyone could participate in this work. If we talk about the future, these are unified tools for analyzing the work of public resources. We set such a task for two thousand professionals who are already actively participating in the project.
Alina:It turns out that since this is a project that covers everything, starting with the idea of ​​a future service, product, website, and ending with user interaction, this is a huge amount of knowledge, a knowledge base.
Artem: Yes, Yandex, Google, Apple coped with this, why can't we cope?
Alina: A huge task, but not impossible.
Artem: This is a solvable problem. Professionals decide it, nothing terrible here. It will be scary for us to roll back at some point if we or the community thinks that this decision is wrong. Then we will make new and correct.
Moreover, it depends not only on the community, but also on developing and changing technologies. We have seen the transition from flash to HTML5 for a long time, maybe some other technologies will change, no matter in narrow or wide places. This should be monitored and dynamically changed in the recommendations. For example, Google does this in its material design guide.
Alina: Where can you see the results, standards, methodologies, what have you already covered and done?
Artem: Now there is only a blog . There is a Facebook community"Design of state systems", where we lay out the result of our activities. In a blog or Facebook, you can find links to our Trello, where we set tasks, where specialists solve them, where they can take the initiative. And the channels in the Telegram, where you can meet, talk and take on the burden to bring something bright and socially meaningful to the project.
The first version of the interface font, which we developed as part of the
Alina project : As far as I understand, not only designers who are directly involved in government projects, but also companies, bring light and socially significant information. For example, ParaType with you makes a new font. You are developing a state font.
Artem:Yes, ParaType works with us on a commercial basis, but, feeling the social significance of this project, they really set the minimum price for working with us in this direction. There are three most important components, I repeat, this is society in terms of discussion, professionals in terms of implementation, and at some stage interaction with the state regulator will appear.
This may be the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications, and the Ministry of Economic Development, they are all important to us at some stages. Here, the third part is the most important of all. There is a commission of the IRI - Institute for Internet Development, I head it, because the initiative went from me, and I have experience on the basis of developing public resources. The Commission is engaged in the elaboration of decisions and work plan in stages in time. Now there is a discussion of the processes, as well as the timing of their publication.
Alina:You talked about society as a consumer of the final product. Whether there were such cases when a person who is not a designer or involved in the development, found out about your group on Facebook, about what you are doing, and he came to you and said: “Guys, I open this site from my mobile device and I do not like some things. Correct them, pay attention. ”
Artem: There are many such cases. If we talk about the “Design of state systems” project, there are people who do not consider themselves professionals, but want to do something, and we don’t even know what to give them, because they are not professionals.
On the other hand, we are working with feedback, and we have the task of correcting the comments that users send us. We work with it - we support resources, we update, we supplement. My friends and people who wanted to make the resource better, send me errors that they find.
Alina: People not only as a consuming side, come forward from the point of view of interaction, but also actively participate.
Artem: Maybe something didn’t work for them at some point, or maybe they want to improve something. But it is necessary to separate.
Alina: What prospects can this project have in terms of licensing, legalization of these standards?
Artem:This may be a team that is part of a department. This way went, for example, the United Kingdom. They do not have a communications ministry, but a team of 250 people has been created in the symmetrical structure, which deals with one giant resource, improving it in all directions.
Alina: Is it Gov.uk?
Artem: Yes. There is an example of America, a team of 50 people. Their strategy is very difficult to understand. They rush in different directions, but also are engaged in the improvement of resources. Standards are also made, but the way they do not make them looks very strange: in different formats, very small.
In our case, there can be any option: a working group under the Presidential Administration, a non-profit organization that is funded by the state to develop guidelines for guidelines and their support. There are many forms of legalization. But this requires changes in legislation, so that it is clear who is the center of competence, the center of responsibility, the center of development.
Alina: From the point of view of non-state projects, about universal benefits: suppose there is a designer, developer or usabilityist who wants to learn something useful from how state systems are being developed. Can he come to your Telegram and learn something valuable and important for himself? Is this practice worth spreading to the non-state sector?
Artem:Of course, this is possible and useful. The process of developing a design system is a very complicated process. If you immerse yourself in this process, listen, see, live, participate, you can get a huge experience, as when working in a large company, working on several projects in parallel with a strong team. This is a unique opportunity when it comes to training or advanced training, or a way to contribute to the project.
Alina: A developer who is interested in understanding how this all happens can be from the side that is not involved [in the design of state systems]?
Artem: There are such people. They watch some moments. If something important, relevant, interesting appears for them, they are announced and say that they can do something better than something that has already been done.
GitHub-repository of the project
Alina: Even if you are not directly involved in the development of the state system, you can safely see how the professionals do it and feel how the work is going on.
Artem: For developers who are not involved in public resources, the components that we create are also useful. For example, a map of the Russian Federation or a map of the world according to the representations of the Russian Federation divided into countries is a very frequent widget that is needed on commercial resources when choosing a regional office.
It is very difficult to find on the Internet a correct, up-to-date map of Russia, which corresponds to Russia’s understanding of the place in the world that it occupies and the number of countries that it recognizes. The map is free, you can use it on a commercial resource.
Alina: Can this all be used?
Artem: Yes. The exception may be the font, because the font is a very “strong” thing that identifies the ecosystem. We understand the fonts where we are. There are a few points. There is a mark, color, or color, and font.
If you take a brandbook of any company, the global is the colors, the sign, the font. The rest: calendars, components developed by professionals, you can take.
Alina:Not just designed by professionals, but with a lot of requirements for these professionals.
Artem: With the requirements for accessibility, the visual component. Accessibility is also different - there are disabled, and there are old browsers, and there is a low connection speed - these are the accessibility criteria.
Alina: Are there more requirements for public resources than to any other commercial company site?
Artem: Of course. The requirements for a commercial company are regulated by the commercial company itself, and the state differs in that in most state resources, as in Facebook, the audience is everything. If an insurance company has a clear understanding of an audience — age, gender, wealth — then state resources should be available to everyone.
There are rare moments when you can narrow down the service for a particular audience, for example, journalists. We focus on them, although such a separate project may be some kind of digest information, if it is released by the state, but for the most part, [what we do should be] accessible to all. This is like Facebook.
Alina: It turns out that those components that are in the public domain are not just made by professionals, but made with so many requirements that a developer will not be [initially] so many standards guided by the fact that this is not a priority for him .
Artem: Maybe his time and labor costs do not allow him to make a decision better, but here it is free, open.
Alina:It is worth taking advantage of the experience of thousands of developers ...
Artem: So far, the experience of several companies that have "eaten a dog" on the development of state sites, and they have good components.
PS ϟ zipper! Registration is now open for the most long-awaited “ Design Weekend ” event in Suzdal on October 15-16. As always, everything and for everyone is free.
[ Listen to this release ]
')
[ Download audio file ]
Alina Testova: Today we are talking about the project “Design of state systems”. How did he appear? How did you get the idea? To you, this is the union of the Artem Geller Laboratory and other companies that have joined this project. Why did you decide to create this project?
Artem Geller: Good afternoon. First, I want to clarify: [the project is created] not by companies, but by people from these and many other companies. The story is not new. Any large system tends to streamline. The state is no different from companies such as Google, Apple or any other large company that provides its services and services on the Internet.
It seeks to unify, standardize interfaces, reduce costs, and more to the many topics that we will discuss. In any case, we will come to this now or in 30 years. And it will be absolutely natural.
Alina: It was an initiative of the specific people involved in the process. They came together to create a project that solves certain issues of services for the state. Why did the need arise?
Artem: There are many reasons. We, the professionals, are familiar with each other, spinning and communicating in the same environment, we are doing government projects. At some point, we realized that the development process can be significantly cheaper.
If we take a cut of federal resources, according to the estimates of the experts we attracted, the state spends about 10 billion rubles a year. All this can be streamlined, clarified, to create a library of components that developers will use. The first goal that the project decides is finance, the second is a single interface, a unique state ecosystem that will not need to be retrained.
Now people go to sites and every time they retrain on a new resource: the user experience changes, the interface changes, the colors change, everything jumps and jumps, it happens well, it happens badly. We make a single ecosystem to which people will get used. It will be technological, functional, convenient and always relevant, because it is the development of a standard or guidelines.
The process is not static - it was developed and completed, but dynamic - a new one appears, the old one changes. We conduct it as openly as possible so that people can work on any components of which there are many, from fonts to interface elements, analytics. If you take any stage of web development, we communicate on it with experts, with the guys from the industry and with people who are interested in improving the state.
Additional reading: On the creation of Kremlin.ru and work with the presidential administration
Alina: It turns out the bidirectional process. On the one hand, when a person comes to the company, they [also] are shown what company’s fonts, icons, corporate colors are used in, and advise him to use all this in presentations, texts, materials, to assemble as from a designer.
Artem: This practice is also common in large companies, because they have long understood the brand advantage. The state is a brand. The state is more and more perceived through its services and websites, which is why a single identification is needed so that a person, opening an application, launching any website, no matter the website of the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Sports, understands that he is communicating with the state.
The site must be understandable, convenient and must be identified with the state resource. I would like the federal level to appear later, and the regional and municipal levels should be covered with one big resource with their own subprojects. The state does not differ from Yandex in its presentation on the web.
Alina: You are creating a “brand book for the state” in terms of how it will be presented [a network]. And from the point of view of internal processes for development.
Artem: A very important point is that the brand book is not so much visual, we are still on the Internet. He and technology. We will describe other things as well: analytics, work with security on resources, how to write texts correctly, how to communicate information and services to citizens.
There are many such moments, we are trying to make methodological recommendations for them. There is global experience, and, guided by it, we can do much better, at least in my picture of the world.
Alina: In a conversation, it sounded that all this is necessary not only for end users, who will receive a single interface, a common understanding of how to work with different government resources, but also for developers. Are there many companies that develop for the state?
Artem: The market is quite large. The current statistics includes about a hundred companies that want to move in this segment, care about their reputation, and carry out public activities.
The number of companies that periodically engage in public resources is estimated at several hundred. If you take the municipal companies, which rarely do government projects, the market will grow to thousands of companies.
Alina: Listeners need to understand that government sites, resources for the state are not one giant single site, the only company has won a tender for the development of a company, and now it does everything. These are both municipal and city sites, considering how many divisions, cities, republics, regions, [such sites] we have - a huge amount.
Artem: The nature of the sites is different. On the one hand, we are talking about service resources like public services, on the other hand, we are talking about sites that talk about the activities of the department. These are websites of ministries and departments that should be service.
We are also talking about state promotional projects. For example, a search for investments for a region is a commercial-oriented site, focused on big business, which can inject funds into projects in this region. The region represents itself in this market. There are many sites, they are “fighting” as well as commercial projects. The only thing is no state stores.
Alina: Suppose there is some company that is developing a website for a conditional regional unit. Can the designer of this company somehow integrate into your community, and not so much from you learn something, some interesting insight or analytics, but somehow assist in the development of these new standards, in creating something new?
Artem: We are as open as possible. We have a blog, Telegram-chat , Telegram-channel , we set tasks for the guys in Trello . In our group in Facebook more than two thousand people. We openly communicate on various issues and problems. And there are real examples when people are connected to certain tasks.
There are people who have joined in the finalization of the eagle for the screens. The eagle is the emblem of Russia, which we did for the president’s site. There are people who are now specifying the boundaries of the map in the SVG, in order to optimize it and it loaded quickly, was as relevant and accurate as possible, and also occupied a minimum of space when loading - the traffic was not wasting.
Now we are launching the guide's website, where we will publish all the components. All components, from the button to the font, we will discuss in the community, everything that we do, we bring to the public. We recently started work on the font, there are already several posts about it. We collected and analyzed comments. There are people who are also interested, they are present at our discussions of this process. So it was with all the components that already exist.
Additional reading: Who we are and how we work together
Alina: People can not just see, but to participate.
Artem: The difficulty is that we cannot understand what pool of tasks we can give to such a volume of people. We know that a certain Ivan is the best in identity, someone is the best in typography. But it is difficult for us to distribute tasks to the mass of people, therefore, usually those who come with the initiative “from the bottom up” connect, that is, they offer us something - we agree.
Everything we do is free. Everything lies on GitHub. We did for the state what it should have done long ago. We have developed the Kremlin [website kremlin.ru], the website of the Council of Federations, the website of the Government. We distribute the components of state resources. Their current versions are on GitHub, there are all our developments that may be of interest to the developer.
Alina: There is an opinion that cool specialists first of all go to commercial companies, high-profile projects: Yandex, Mail.ru, Google, Apple. How many such powerful, tough specialists are working on public services? Are there any stars of design, typography, usability, UX in this topic?
Artem: 5-6 years ago there was a turning point when all my familiar directors of design studios, advertising agencies, creative agencies began to meet with me periodically and figure out how to get into this niche and how profitable it was to start working with the public sector. Now all the major studios in the top ten by rating, and large companies engaged in web development, have projects related to the state.
Someone does projects for Moscow, like the Red Keds, someone does a little different, but also for Moscow, like Notamedia. Someone is doing for state services, like AIC, someone is for federal departments, like us. In the top ten sites there are certain government projects.
Alina: Why did such an interest appear? People began to realize that these are complex and ambitious tasks, or has the prestige of this area increased? Or something else?
Artem: There are many factors here. There is also the prestige of the direction, people have seen that you can do well and receive from this important loyalty from the professional community. There is a financial moment, because the state - most often stable money, and with commerce happens in different ways.
I left commerce because I was tired of making sites for companies like Danone. I wanted social significance. When employees understand that they are doing a resource for themselves, their parents, they are immersed in work, they realize that they have an incentive.
Alina: It turns out that design studios become more socially responsible when they join government projects.
Artem: It all depends on people. But when you reach a certain level, and we are talking about strong, strong companies, you cross the line beyond which social importance becomes important to you. First, you do for someone, but all the time you raise the bar until you reach the bar “I want to improve the whole world.”
Now - this is the “I want to improve my state” plank. So good projects are born. Strong, good projects more and more, and it ceased to embarrass people. If earlier they secretly met me, they spoke quietly, but now it is a public topic, no one is embarrassed about it. I think this sector has a great future.
Alina: It has ceased to be a little embarrassing, but on the contrary - it became interesting.
Artem: Real professionals began to take away some of the work (design, design) from those who previously could not, could not, but somehow did those same government projects. Therefore, we see more and more good projects. I love it.
Alina: [Professionals take away part of the work of those who] did the very thing “malachite on gold, gold on malachite”?
Artem: Maybe [for those who] used to do not very beautiful and comfortable, functional things.
Alina: To what extent is the state a complex customer in terms of requirements, needs, taste?
Artem: In my picture of the world, the state customer is no different from a commercial one. I used to say that it was easier to work with the state. Over the 7 years that I have been involved in government projects, my opinion has changed: not simpler, but also.
There are different people, teams of people, different departments, press services, but in every project we do, there are one or several people on the client’s side who are ready to give everything so that this resource is good. It motivates me a lot: they fight within their corporate state culture, bureaucracy. They are fighting for good decisions, and not for "the boss said - you do."
Alina: It would seem that people from outside have an idea of ​​state projects as very inflexible, bureaucratic. It turns out that there are also people from the customer’s side who are ready to contribute, help, change projects for the better.
Artem: Yes, they sometimes risk their careers, cursing with their superiors, trying to explain that this is correct, convenient, accessible, and this is more important to us than the option proposed from above. There must always be strong arguments. In my experience of communicating with people, if you have sufficiently serious arguments, then your decision will be made by state officials, if there are no good arguments, then you yourself are not right about something.
Alina: Another moment, perhaps, is the myth about working with the state or the state: when it comes to developing, creating something, there are suspicions that for all of this GOSTs have already been made, and within the framework of these GOSTs you cannot go anywhere - creativity from government projects do not have to. How do GOSTs define your work? How many of them need to be finalized in order to get the standards that were mentioned at the very beginning?
Artem: Standards with guests are a bit unrelated. If we talk about web development, website developers or not too complicated services, they are not burdened with anything, there is a federal law about what should be published on state resources, this is all. For security, information security has its own GOSTs, licenses. Security companies have them.
The state unexpectedly gives us the opportunity, I will tell on the example of an eagle. There is a presidential decree on how the eagle should look. Everyone has a feeling that it can not be changed, but any person, a designer can draw his own eagle, he must follow only a few requirements.
Exaggerated: there should be crowns on the heads of eagles, in the right hand it should be, in the left hand it should be. Further the question of stylization is not regulated, therefore any illustrator, designer can make it in his own opinion. We managed to do it for the screens. Although when this idea arose, they thought that it was somehow regulated, and we could not do anything with it. We can.
Alina: Do you want to make this eagle exactly the standard for different sites?
Artyom: We want to make it an open standard so that any person on GitHub or any other free platform where you can add your innovations or changes can make a useful contribution to the quality of the output.
If a person succeeds, exaggerates, corrects the coordinates of a region, or corrects an eagle foot, do better than we did, we accept it. Now everyone will have this eagle with the right foot. This applies to all components: typography, interface elements, distance, indents, grids, basic things, technical principles, style of working with people, working with text. In all you can participate.
Additional reading: State interface and user interaction scenarios
Alina: It turns out that the standards that the design of state systems is working on are not just strict guidelines. This is an active platform for continuous improvement, improvement of the quality of what the state system can offer to its users.
Artem: There are two things: guidelines and principles. Guidelines - this is what we recommend to do. Principles are a philosophy, an understanding of processes, how to work with citizens of a state.
We have to fix ourselves in something in order to build on this and move. We have to decide on the platform, and then work on the exterior. It all starts with the basic - project management: information management, scaling, principles, efficiency, launching alpha and beta versions of projects, collecting feedback from users, processing and reacting to it.
The standard covers the development process itself: principles, security, licensing, setting up and testing servers, accessibility, API, open by the state, planned release issues. Design standards are focused on citizens for solving problems of a unified identity, graphical interface, icons, pictograms.
A very important point - accessibility for people with disabilities who are not concerned about many government resources. Or, at least, what they have done is a profanation. This is the correct, convenient data visualization, design patterns, so that designers from other companies can follow it, free state font - now the state can use only free system fonts. There are times when designers need fonts, and they begin to spend public money to buy fonts, technologies, and analytics.
As a result, we want to get a single interface of citizen-state interaction.With a set of standards, we will improve the quality of public resources, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, improve readability - we will no longer meet small fonts "gray over gray."
In our work, we, first of all, try to solve the tasks of citizens, rather than engage in styling. This will be the interface for correct and fast work, not a styling game. We want to make a single center of analytics and competence, so that you can ask a question and see how it is right, so that the customer or the developer can understand whether it is moving in the right direction.
Developers will be able to take all sorts of components. This project will increase the level of transparency in the development of the authorities in this segment of the network everything will be open. As we communicate with all representatives of the industry, the important point is that the result will be accepted by the professional community, for the most part.
The community objectively sees bad resources, scolds them, and everyone could participate in this work. If we talk about the future, these are unified tools for analyzing the work of public resources. We set such a task for two thousand professionals who are already actively participating in the project.
Alina:It turns out that since this is a project that covers everything, starting with the idea of ​​a future service, product, website, and ending with user interaction, this is a huge amount of knowledge, a knowledge base.
Artem: Yes, Yandex, Google, Apple coped with this, why can't we cope?
Alina: A huge task, but not impossible.
Artem: This is a solvable problem. Professionals decide it, nothing terrible here. It will be scary for us to roll back at some point if we or the community thinks that this decision is wrong. Then we will make new and correct.
Moreover, it depends not only on the community, but also on developing and changing technologies. We have seen the transition from flash to HTML5 for a long time, maybe some other technologies will change, no matter in narrow or wide places. This should be monitored and dynamically changed in the recommendations. For example, Google does this in its material design guide.
Alina: Where can you see the results, standards, methodologies, what have you already covered and done?
Artem: Now there is only a blog . There is a Facebook community"Design of state systems", where we lay out the result of our activities. In a blog or Facebook, you can find links to our Trello, where we set tasks, where specialists solve them, where they can take the initiative. And the channels in the Telegram, where you can meet, talk and take on the burden to bring something bright and socially meaningful to the project.
The first version of the interface font, which we developed as part of the
Alina project : As far as I understand, not only designers who are directly involved in government projects, but also companies, bring light and socially significant information. For example, ParaType with you makes a new font. You are developing a state font.
Artem:Yes, ParaType works with us on a commercial basis, but, feeling the social significance of this project, they really set the minimum price for working with us in this direction. There are three most important components, I repeat, this is society in terms of discussion, professionals in terms of implementation, and at some stage interaction with the state regulator will appear.
This may be the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications, and the Ministry of Economic Development, they are all important to us at some stages. Here, the third part is the most important of all. There is a commission of the IRI - Institute for Internet Development, I head it, because the initiative went from me, and I have experience on the basis of developing public resources. The Commission is engaged in the elaboration of decisions and work plan in stages in time. Now there is a discussion of the processes, as well as the timing of their publication.
Alina:You talked about society as a consumer of the final product. Whether there were such cases when a person who is not a designer or involved in the development, found out about your group on Facebook, about what you are doing, and he came to you and said: “Guys, I open this site from my mobile device and I do not like some things. Correct them, pay attention. ”
Artem: There are many such cases. If we talk about the “Design of state systems” project, there are people who do not consider themselves professionals, but want to do something, and we don’t even know what to give them, because they are not professionals.
On the other hand, we are working with feedback, and we have the task of correcting the comments that users send us. We work with it - we support resources, we update, we supplement. My friends and people who wanted to make the resource better, send me errors that they find.
Alina: People not only as a consuming side, come forward from the point of view of interaction, but also actively participate.
Artem: Maybe something didn’t work for them at some point, or maybe they want to improve something. But it is necessary to separate.
Alina: What prospects can this project have in terms of licensing, legalization of these standards?
Artem:This may be a team that is part of a department. This way went, for example, the United Kingdom. They do not have a communications ministry, but a team of 250 people has been created in the symmetrical structure, which deals with one giant resource, improving it in all directions.
Alina: Is it Gov.uk?
Artem: Yes. There is an example of America, a team of 50 people. Their strategy is very difficult to understand. They rush in different directions, but also are engaged in the improvement of resources. Standards are also made, but the way they do not make them looks very strange: in different formats, very small.
In our case, there can be any option: a working group under the Presidential Administration, a non-profit organization that is funded by the state to develop guidelines for guidelines and their support. There are many forms of legalization. But this requires changes in legislation, so that it is clear who is the center of competence, the center of responsibility, the center of development.
Alina: From the point of view of non-state projects, about universal benefits: suppose there is a designer, developer or usabilityist who wants to learn something useful from how state systems are being developed. Can he come to your Telegram and learn something valuable and important for himself? Is this practice worth spreading to the non-state sector?
Artem:Of course, this is possible and useful. The process of developing a design system is a very complicated process. If you immerse yourself in this process, listen, see, live, participate, you can get a huge experience, as when working in a large company, working on several projects in parallel with a strong team. This is a unique opportunity when it comes to training or advanced training, or a way to contribute to the project.
Alina: A developer who is interested in understanding how this all happens can be from the side that is not involved [in the design of state systems]?
Artem: There are such people. They watch some moments. If something important, relevant, interesting appears for them, they are announced and say that they can do something better than something that has already been done.
GitHub-repository of the project
Alina: Even if you are not directly involved in the development of the state system, you can safely see how the professionals do it and feel how the work is going on.
Artem: For developers who are not involved in public resources, the components that we create are also useful. For example, a map of the Russian Federation or a map of the world according to the representations of the Russian Federation divided into countries is a very frequent widget that is needed on commercial resources when choosing a regional office.
It is very difficult to find on the Internet a correct, up-to-date map of Russia, which corresponds to Russia’s understanding of the place in the world that it occupies and the number of countries that it recognizes. The map is free, you can use it on a commercial resource.
Alina: Can this all be used?
Artem: Yes. The exception may be the font, because the font is a very “strong” thing that identifies the ecosystem. We understand the fonts where we are. There are a few points. There is a mark, color, or color, and font.
If you take a brandbook of any company, the global is the colors, the sign, the font. The rest: calendars, components developed by professionals, you can take.
Alina:Not just designed by professionals, but with a lot of requirements for these professionals.
Artem: With the requirements for accessibility, the visual component. Accessibility is also different - there are disabled, and there are old browsers, and there is a low connection speed - these are the accessibility criteria.
Alina: Are there more requirements for public resources than to any other commercial company site?
Artem: Of course. The requirements for a commercial company are regulated by the commercial company itself, and the state differs in that in most state resources, as in Facebook, the audience is everything. If an insurance company has a clear understanding of an audience — age, gender, wealth — then state resources should be available to everyone.
There are rare moments when you can narrow down the service for a particular audience, for example, journalists. We focus on them, although such a separate project may be some kind of digest information, if it is released by the state, but for the most part, [what we do should be] accessible to all. This is like Facebook.
Alina: It turns out that those components that are in the public domain are not just made by professionals, but made with so many requirements that a developer will not be [initially] so many standards guided by the fact that this is not a priority for him .
Artem: Maybe his time and labor costs do not allow him to make a decision better, but here it is free, open.
Alina:It is worth taking advantage of the experience of thousands of developers ...
Artem: So far, the experience of several companies that have "eaten a dog" on the development of state sites, and they have good components.
PS ϟ zipper! Registration is now open for the most long-awaited “ Design Weekend ” event in Suzdal on October 15-16. As always, everything and for everyone is free.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/312412/
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