Strategy & Innovation · Government Services
We rapidly prototyped a solution to reinvent the way city and state governments serve citizens with the greatest need. Panorama gave caseworkers a panoramic view across the HHS ecosystem — and the client was so floored by the speed and quality of the outcome that they invited us on-site to teach the approach. That's how the Helix Innovation Lab was born.
The Ask
The client came bearing strong research and high-level strategy for a state services portal that could sync data across the HHS ecosystem — SNAP Benefits, Child Protective Services, Child Support Services, the Justice System, and more. What they needed from us was the leap from insight to action: ideation, translation, and a tangible artifact leadership could see, feel, and rally behind.
Three intentional outcomes anchored the work: ease the load on caseworkers, enable personalized action plans for the citizens they serve, and give those citizens a clear path to financial wellness and security.
The Approach
The client's research was solid. We started by mapping it into a shared frame — the caseworker's day, the citizen's journey, the pain points where fragmented services failed both.
Journey maps made the interdependencies visible. Where an SNAP handoff to Child Support currently required three phone calls and a fax, the map showed a single unified moment.
Wireframes to clickable prototypes. Agency Supervisor and Caseworker views, relationship maps, expandable behavioral factors, in-app chat — the full picture of what "connected government" could look like on one screen.
The client was floored — not just at what we'd shipped in a week, but at how we'd worked. That reaction was the origin story of the Helix Innovation Lab: they asked us on-site to teach the approach, and we did.
Great work doesn't end with the readout. It starts a bigger conversation.
The moment Panorama became the seed of the Helix Innovation Lab
The Outcome
What Made It Work
They came with strong insights. Our job wasn't to redo that work — it was to translate it into a shape leadership could act on.
Clickable beats descriptive. A journey map and a working prototype outperform any deck when the goal is to unlock investment and belief.
The best outcome from a great sprint isn't the artifact — it's the conversation that starts because the client saw what was possible.
Selected Artifacts
[COMING SOON] An interactive prototype for Panorama is in development and will be embedded here. Static artifacts (journey map, prototype flow, supervisor + caseworker dashboards, relationship map, style-tile outcomes) live in the source folder as a fallback if needed.