DCHS Insights CX Human-Centered Design @ DCHS PROTOTYPE no real data Planning question: What would have to be true for each person to experience DCHS as one system rather than a collection of programs? Janice Brown, Aboul & Hossina, and Marisol Reyes represent three very different encounters with DCHS. Their journeys make the costs of fragmentation concrete and give us a consistent way to test whether a proposed change would matter on the client side of the counter.
These are fictional, composite personas. Janice and Aboul & Hossina were developed in April 2025 with six-stage journeys. Marisol was added later to represent the everyday client the earlier work did not capture: someone solving one ordinary problem, with limited time and no reason to think she needs coordinated care.
Together, the three keep us from designing service integration only for the most complex case or only for the easiest transaction.
First refresh our shared memory of the clients behind this work. Then test the same idea across all three rather than choosing the persona who best supports it.
Revisit these previously developed personas before discussing initiatives. They ground the work in clients' goals, burdens, and reasons for coming to DCHS—the clients are why service integration matters.
Choose an initiative, screening flow, PULSE segment, research plan, or another service-integration idea. Ask where each person encounters it, whether they understand and trust it, and whether it leads to a useful next step.
Look for changes in doors, retellings, forms, time, needs surfaced, and indignities—and note what remains unchanged.
Separate what DCHS knows from what the persona makes plausible, then turn the most consequential unknown into a research question.
Open each profile to compare the current and integrated journey, the system around it, the client costs, and the questions the scenario cannot answer for us.
Housing insecurity and fragmented services complicate one mother's efforts to find stability and reunite with her children.
Integration reduces the number of doors and the number of times you must retell your worst day.
Language barriers, work schedules, and eligibility rules complicate one household's effort to resolve its housing crisis.
Integration can reduce exclusions caused by language and fragmented processes while clearly identifying eligibility rules it cannot change.
Works full time. Came to fix one document. Left with needs we would not have seen.
A brief check-in at the right point can identify additional needs without substantially extending the visit.
Use these to distinguish a useful design hypothesis from a claim that needs evidence.
For any proposal reviewed here, record who benefits, where it fails, the assumption it exposes, and what should happen next.
| Proposal | Who benefits | Where it fails | Assumption exposed | Evidence needed | Revision or next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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