Why do we need the project “Design of state systems”

    Hello, Habr! Today we decided to share with the community a text version of one of the issues of the Metrika podcast, in which we talked about working on the project “ Design of government systems ”. [ Listen to this issue ] [ 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 an association of Artem Geller’s Laboratory and other companies that have joined this project. Why did you decide to create this project? Artem Geller:










    Good afternoon. Firstly, 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 seeks 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, to reduce costs and many more 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 specific people involved in the process. They came together to create a certain project that solves certain issues of services for the state. Why did this need arise?

    Artyom:There are many reasons. We, professionals, are familiar with each other, we are spinning and communicating in the same environment, we are doing state projects. At some point, we realized that the development process can be significantly cheaper.

    If we take a cut of federal resources, the government spends about 10 billion rubles a year on it, according to the estimates of the experts we have recruited. All this can be streamlined, clarified, created a library of components that developers will use. The first goal that the project solves is finances, the second is a single interface, a unique state ecosystem that does not need to be retrained.

    Now people go to sites and re-learn every time on a new resource: user experience changes, the interface changes, colors change, everything jumps and jumps, it can be done well, it can be bad. We are making a single ecosystem that people will get used to. It will be technological, functional, convenient and always relevant, because it is the development of a standard or guidelines.

    The process is not static - developed and completed, but dynamic - a new one appears, the old 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 we take any stage of web development, we communicate on it with specialists, with 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 administration of President

    Alin: It turns out a bidirectional process. On the one hand, when a person comes to a company, they [show him] what kind of fonts, icons, corporate colors are used in the company, and they advise him to use all this in presentations, texts, materials, assemble as from a designer.

    Artem: This practice is also common in large companies because they have long understood the brand's advantage. The state is a brand. The state is more and more perceived through its services and sites, therefore, a unified identification is needed so that a person, opening the application, launching any site, no matter the site of the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Sports, understands that he communicates with the state.

    The site should be understandable, convenient and should be identified with the state resource. I want the federal level to appear in the future, and the regional and municipal levels to be covered by one large resource with their subprojects. The state in its representation on the network is no different from Yandex.

    Alina: You are creating a “brand book for the state” in terms of how it will be presented [on the network]. And also in terms 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 is technological. We will describe other things: analytics, working with security on resources, how to write texts, how to properly convey information and services for citizens.

    There are many such moments; we are trying to make methodological recommendations on them. There is world experience, and, guided by it, we can do much better, at least in my picture of the world.

    Alina: In the conversation, it was said 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 are developing for the state?

    Artem: The market is quite large. The statistics available today totals about one hundred companies that want to advance in this segment, care about their reputation, and conduct public activities.

    The number of companies periodically engaged in public resources is estimated at several hundred. If we take municipal companies that rarely do government projects, the market will grow to a thousand companies.

    Alina: Listeners need to understand that state sites, resources for the state - this is not one gigantic single site, the tender for the development of which was won by the only company and now does everything. These are both municipal sites and city sites, given how many units, cities, republics, regions, [such sites] we have - a huge amount.

    Artyom:The nature of sites is different. On the one hand, we are talking about service resources like government services, on the other hand, we are talking about sites that talk about the activities of the department. These are the websites of ministries and departments that should be service ones.

    We are also talking about government promotional projects. For example, the search for investments for a region is a commercial website focused on a large business that can inject financial resources into projects in this region. The region represents itself in this market. There are a lot of sites, they “fight” as well as commercial projects. The only thing is that there are 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 only get something from you, some interesting insight or analytics, but somehow help in the development of these new standards, in the creation of 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 . Our Facebook group has more than two thousand people. We communicate openly on various issues and problems. And there are real examples when people are connected to certain tasks.

    There are people who have connected to finalizing the eagle for screens. Eagle - the coat of arms of Russia, which we did for the site of the president. There are people who are now specifying the boundaries of the map in SVG in order to optimize it and it was loaded quickly, was as up-to-date and accurate, and also occupied a minimum of space when loading - I did not spend traffic.

    Now we are launching the guide website, on which we will publish all the components. We will discuss all components, from buttons to fonts, in the community, everything we do, we put into public. Recently, we 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 in 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 watch, but 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’s difficult for us to hand out tasks to the mass of people, therefore, those who come up with the initiative “from the bottom up” are usually connected, that is, they offer us something - we agree.

    Everything we do is free. Everything is on GitHub. We have done for the state what it should have done a long time ago. We developed the Kremlin [site kremlin.ru], the site of the Council of Federations, the site of the Government. We are distributing components of government 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 primarily go to commercial companies, high-profile projects: Yandex, Mail.ru, Google, Apple. How many such powerful, cool specialists work on public services? Are there any stars of design, typography, usability, UX in this thread?

    Artyom:5-6 years ago, there was a turning point when all my friends, directors of design studios, advertising agencies, creative agencies, began to periodically meet with me and figure out how to get into this niche and how profitable it is to start working with the public sector. Now all the major studios in the top ten in the rating, and large companies involved in web development, have projects related to the state.

    Someone makes projects for Moscow, like the Red Keds, someone does a little different, but also for Moscow, like Notamedia. Someone is doing for public services, like AIC, someone - for federal departments, like us. The top ten sites have certain government projects.

    Alina:Why is there such an interest? People began to understand that these are complex and ambitious tasks, or has the prestige of this direction increased? Or something else?

    Artem: There are many factors. There is also the prestige of the direction, people saw what can be done well and get important loyalty from the professional community. There is a financial moment, because the state is most often stable money, and with commerce it happens in different ways.

    I quit commerce because I was tired of making websites for companies like Danone. I wanted social significance. When employees understand that they are making a resource for themselves, their parents, they are immersed in the 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 the people. But when you reach a certain level, and we are talking about strong, strong companies, you cross the line beyond which social significance becomes important to you. At 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 bar "I want to improve my state." So good projects are born. Strong, good projects more and more, and this ceased to confuse people. If earlier they met secretly with me and spoke quietly, now this is a public topic, no one is shy about it. I think this sector has a great future.

    Alina:It has ceased to be a little ashamed, but on the contrary - it became interesting.

    Artem: Real professionals began to take away some of the work (engineering, design) from those who could not before, did not know how, but somehow did the very same state projects. Therefore, we see more and more good projects. I love it.

    Alina: [Professionals take away part of the work from those who] did the very “malachite on gold, gold on malachite”?

    Artem: Maybe [those who] used to do not very nice and comfortable, functional things.

    Alina: How much is the state a difficult customer in terms of requirements, needs, taste?

    Artyom:In my picture of the world, the state customer is no different from the commercial one. I used to say that it’s easier to work with the state. Over the 7 years that I have been engaged in government projects, my opinion has changed: it’s not easier, but also.

    There are different people, teams of people, different departments, press services, but in each project that we do, the client has one or more people who are ready to give everything so that this resource is good. This motivates me very much: they are fighting within their corporate state culture, bureaucracy. They fight for good decisions, and not for the "boss said - you do."

    Alina:It would seem that people from outside have an idea of ​​government projects as being very inflexible, bureaucratic. It turns out, and there are people on the part of the customer who are ready to contribute, help, change projects for the better.

    Artem: Yes, sometimes they risk their careers, cursing with their superiors, trying to explain that this is correct, convenient, affordable, and this is more important to us than the option proposed from above. There must always be good 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 wrong in something.

    Alina:Another point, maybe a myth about working with the state or the state: when it comes to designing, creating something, there are suspicions that GOSTs have already been made for all this, and within these GOSTs you can’t go anywhere - wait for creativity from government projects is not necessary. How do GOSTs define your work? How many of them need to be refined to get the standards that were discussed at the very beginning?

    Artem: Standards with state standards 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 on what should be published on government resources, that's all. On security, information protection has its own GOSTs, licenses. Security companies own them.

    The state unexpectedly gives us the opportunity, I will tell you by example with an eagle. There is a Presidential Decree on how an eagle should look. Everyone has a feeling that it cannot be changed, but any person, designer can draw his eagle, he must follow only a few requirements.

    Exaggerated: on the heads of the eagles there should be crowns, in the right hand - that, in the left - this. Further, the issue of stylization is not regulated, therefore, any illustrator, designer can make it in his opinion. We managed to make 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 the standard for different sites?

    Artyom:We want to make it an open standard so that anyone on GitHub or any other free platform, where you can add your own innovations or changes, can make a useful contribution to the quality of the output.

    If a person succeeds in exaggerating, correcting the coordinates of the region or adjusting the foot of an eagle, to do better than we did, we accept this. Now everyone will have this eagle with the right foot. This applies to all components: typography, interface elements, distance, indentation, grids, basic things, technical principles, style of working with people, working with text. You can participate in everything.



    Additional reading: State interface and scenarios of interaction with users

    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, improving the quality of what the state system can offer its users.

    Artem: There are two things: guidelines and principles. Guidelines are what we recommend doing. Principles - this is a philosophy, understanding of processes, how to work with citizens of the state.

    We have to fix something in order to push and move from this. We must decide on the platform, and then work on the exterior. It all starts with the basic one - project management: information management, scaling, principles, efficiency, launching alpha and beta versions of projects, collecting feedback from users, its processing and reaction to it.

    The standard covers the development process itself: principles, security, licensing, server configuration and testing, availability, APIs open by the state, and planned release releases. Design standards are aimed at citizens to solve the problems of a single identity, graphic interface, icons, pictograms.

    A very important point is accessibility for people with disabilities who are not concerned about many state resources. Or at least what they have done is profanity. This is a correct, convenient visualization of data, design patterns so that designers of other companies can follow them, a free state font - now the state can use only exclusively free system fonts. There are times when designers need fonts, and they begin to spend government money on buying fonts, technologies, and analytics.

    As a result, we want to get a single interface between a citizen and the state. 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 see small fonts “gray on gray”.

    In our work, we, first of all, try to solve the tasks of citizens, and not engage in stylization. It will be an interface for correct and quick work, not a styling game. We want to create 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 developer can understand whether he is moving in the right direction.

    Developers will be able to take all kinds of components. This project will increase the level of transparency of the activities of authorities in development - in this segment, everything will be open in the network. Since 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 is objective - it sees bad resources, scolds them, and everyone could participate in this work. If we talk about the future, these are common tools for analyzing the work of state resources. We set this task for two thousand professionals who are already actively involved in the project.

    Alina:It turns out that since this is a project that covers everything from the idea of ​​a future service, product, site, and ending with user interaction, this is a huge amount of knowledge, a knowledge base.

    Artem: Yes, Yandex, Google, Apple have dealt with this, why can't we do it?

    Alina: A huge task, but not impossible.

    Artem: This is a task to be solved. Professionals solve it, there is nothing terrible here. We will not be afraid to roll back at some point if we or the community considers this decision to be wrong. Then we will do new and right.

    Moreover, it depends not only on the community, but also on developing and changing technologies. We saw a long transition from flash to HTML5, 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 I see the results, standards, methodologies, what you have already managed to cover and do?

    Artem: Now there is only a blog . There is a community on Facebook“Design of government systems”, where we post the result of our activities. You can find links to our Trello on your blog or Facebook, where we set tasks, where specialists solve them, where you can take the initiative. And the channels in Telegram where you can get to know each other, chat and take on the burden in order to bring something bright and socially significant to the project.



    The first version of the interface font that we developed as part of the

    Alina project : As I understand it, not only designers who are directly involved in government projects, but also companies, make light and socially significant. For example, ParaType is making a new font with you. You are developing a state font.

    Artyom:Yes, ParaType works with us on a commercial basis, but feeling the social significance of this project, they really set a minimum price for working with us in this direction. There are three most important components, I repeat, this is a 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 Administration of the President, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Economic Development, they are all important to us at some stages. Now, the third part is the most important of all. There is a commission of the IRI - Internet Development Institute, I am heading it, because the initiative came from me, and I have experience in developing public resources. The Commission is engaged in the development of decisions and a work plan in stages by 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. Have there been 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 don’t like some things. Correct them, pay attention. "

    Artem: There are many such cases. If we talk about the project “Design of state systems”, there are people who do not consider themselves professionals, but want to do something, but we don’t even know what to give them, because they are not professionals.

    On the other hand, we work with feedback, and we have the task of correcting the comments that users send us. We work with this - we support, update, supplement resources. My friends and people who wanted to make the resource better send me errors they find.

    Alina: People not only, as a consumer, act in terms 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’s necessary to separate.

    Alina: What prospects can this project have in terms of licensing, legalization of these standards?

    Artyom:This may be a team that is part of a department. For example, Great Britain went this way. They do not have a ministry of communications, but in a symmetrical structure a team of 250 people has been created, which is engaged in one gigantic resource, improving it in all directions.

    Alina: Is this 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 improving resources. The standards also do the same, but the way they do not make them look very strange: in different formats, very small.

    In our case, there can be any option: a working group under the Presidential Administration, a nonprofit organization that is funded by the state to develop guidelines for guidelines and their support. There are many forms of legalization. But for this, legislative changes are necessary 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-governmental projects, about universal benefit: suppose there is a designer, developer or usabilityist who wants to learn something useful from how the development of state systems is being conducted. Can he come to you on Telegram and learn something valuable and important for himself? Should this practice be extended to the private sector?

    Artyom:Of course, this is possible and useful. The process of developing a design system is a very complex process. If you immerse yourself in this process, listen, watch, live, participate, you can gain tremendous 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 may not be involved [in the design of state systems]?

    Artem: There are such people. They are watching some moments. If something important, relevant, interesting for them appears, they are announced and said that they can do something better than something already done.





    Alina project GitHub repository : Even if you are not directly involved in the development of the state system, you can calmly see how professionals do it and feel how the work is going.

    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 world map 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 branch.

    On the Internet it is very difficult to find the correct, current map of Russia, which corresponds to the understanding of Russia about the place in the world that it occupies and the number of countries that it recognizes. The card is free, you can use it on a commercial resource.

    Alina: Can all this be used?

    Artem: Yes. The exception may be the font, because the font is a very “strong” thing that identifies the ecosystem. We understand in fonts where we are. There are a few points. There is a sign, color, or colors, and a font.

    If you take the brand book of any company, the global is the color, sign, font. The rest: calendars, components developed by professionals, you can take.

    Alina:Not just developed by professionals, but with a lot of requirements for these professionals.

    Artem: With requirements for accessibility, for the visual component. Accessibility is also different - there are people with disabilities, and there are old browsers, and there is a low connection speed - these are accessibility criteria.

    Alina: There are more requirements to state resources than to the site of any other commercial company?

    Artem: Of course. The requirements for a commercial company are regulated by the commercial company itself, and the state is different in that in most government resources, like Facebook, the audience is everything. If an insurance company’s tariff clearly understands the audience — age, gender, wealth — then government resources should be available to everyone.

    There are rare moments when you can narrow the service for a particular audience, for example, journalists. We focus on them, although such a separate project may be some kind of information digest, if it is issued by the state, but for the most part, [what we are doing should be] accessible to everyone. It 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 the developer will not be [initially] guided by so many standards due to the fact that this is not a priority for him .

    Artem: Maybe his time and labor do not allow him to make a better decision, but here it’s 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 websites, and they still have good components.



    PS ϟ lightning! Registration for the long-awaited event " Design weekend " in Suzdal on October 15-16 is open . As always, everything is free for everyone.

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