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SSN Card Request Tool

Workflow Design • Eligibility Logic • UX Writing • Mobile-First UI • End-to-End HCD

Design Story Overview

Requesting or replacing a Social Security card sounds simple — but in practice, it’s one of SSA’s most complex eligibility workflows.

Users fall into dozens of categories:

Before this work, SSA’s guidance was difficult to navigate:

The SSN Card Request Tool (affectionately called “the enumeration screener” by internal staff) was designed to simplify the user’s journey, reduce confusion, and guide users step-by-step to the correct instructions for their situation.

I served as a UX strategist, content designer, and flow architect, shaping the logic, UI structure, and plain-language experience behind the tool.

The following sections offer a structured walkthrough of how we translated a dense policy domain into a streamlined digital workflow—covering discovery, logic definition, design, testing, organizational impact, and opportunities for future improvement. Together, they highlight the depth of this work and the systems-level change it enabled.

1. The Call to Solve a Problem - Clarifying User Needs, Pain Points, and the Core Challenge

The original experience had several challenges, users often dealt with:

1a. Highly complex policy

Eligibility rules vary depending on:

1b. Fragmented guidance creating confusion and stallled applications

SSA’s documentation rules were scattered across inconsistent sources, including:

1c. Broken user journeys that created avoidable strain on staff

Users frequently arrived at field offices:

1d. High-pressure moments that triggered a stress cycle for users and staff

Most users approached this task with real urgency. They needed a Social Security card so they could:

That urgency elevated stress, and that stress made an already confusing experience feel even harder to navigate, increasing errors, repeat visits, and frustration. In turn, stressed and confused users put additional pressure on already overworked staff, creating a vicious cycle where unclear guidance amplified stress on both sides of the counter.

We needed an experience that was:

Stitched set of three screenshots showing the previous SSA site 'required documents' page as it appears on mobile, with dense text and minimal visual hierarchy.

Figure 1.: Before, users lacked a single, authoritative way to verify the documents they specifically needed.

2. Gathering the Right Team - My Role, Collaboration Approach, and Cross-Functional Partnerships

Role: UX Strategist / Content Designer

I led or co-led:

Core collaborators:

Flowchart showing a high-level internal process for Social Security Card applications, indicating that all children must visit an office, and only U.S. citizens who can be verified electronically can file online.

Figure 2: High-level visualization of the user’s Social Security card application flow.

3. Navigating the Design Journey - End-to-End UX Process: Discovery, IA, Content Strategy, Prototyping, and Testing

3a. Discovery & Research

We identified:

Research methods:

Key insights:

3b. Defining Logic & Requirements

Designing this tool required untangling every possible scenario a user might fall into.
Eligibility for a Social Security card depends on a wide range of factors, including:

Early analysis showed that the existing logic was either nonexistent or written for program administrators—not for the public. To create a clearer, more navigable experience, we reframed the decision points around user-centered questions, presented in a natural order that aligned with real mental models.

The core structure of the redesigned logic

I. Who are you filing for?
Understanding whether the user is acting for themselves, a minor child, or someone else determines eligibility and what authority or documentation they must present.

II. Why do you need a card?
Different scenarios—name changes, newly naturalized citizens, recently adopted children, and users without traditional ID—trigger different evidence requirements.

III. Where are you located?
Users living abroad, unhoused individuals, and those in states that permit electronic disclosure each require distinct workflows and instructions.

IV. What documents do you have today?
Users often misunderstand “original” versus “certified” documents. Asking early about what they possess helps route them into the correct evidence path.

V. What else applies to your situation?
Additional conditions—such as age, recent immigration status changes, or special exceptions—further refine the path and ensure accuracy.

By restructuring the program’s dense, rule-based logic into straightforward, sequential questions, we created a streamlined decision-tree architecture that users could navigate one step at a time without needing to understand the underlying policy.

3c. Design & Prototyping (Figma)

Deliverables I created:

UX principles used:

3d. Testing & Iteration

We used:

Improvements made:

Testing confirmed major increases in clarity and task confidence.

3e. Delivery & Collaboration

I collaborated with:

We aligned on:

4. Reaching the Breakthrough Moments - Key Insights, Usability Findings, Decisions, and Iterations

Clarity & comprehension

I crafted the copy to match the terminology field offices use every day, ensuring users and staff were finally speaking the same language. (See Figure 4)

Operational impact

User empowerment

Users reported:

Image showing five Pause Point examples for Social Security Card applications: one for users experiencing homelessness, two for users who must visit an office but should start online, one for users who can apply entirely online, and one for citizens living outside the U.S.

Figure4: Examples of “Pause Points”: strategically placed, user-specific prompts that increase the likelihood of resolving tasks during the initial interaction.

5. Ripples Across the Organization - Outcomes, Impact Metrics, and Alignment to Agency Priorities

The SSN Card Request Tool was designed to help individuals understand a complex, high-stakes process — but its effects reached far beyond the user interface. It created measurable improvements across multiple layers of SSA’s service delivery ecosystem.

Measurable Outcomes

Increased comprehension and reduced errors

Lower operational burden on frontline staff

Stronger alignment with accessibility & language access goals

Organizational Impact

Clearer pathways reduced friction across multiple components

The streamlined eligibility logic helped program, policy, and operations teams speak a shared language. By centralizing and simplifying rules, the tool reduced cross-component discrepancies and improved internal consistency.

Field offices and operations benefited directly

Frontline employees frequently noted:

These improvements strengthened SSA’s capacity to process workloads accurately and efficiently.

Repeatable patterns for future workflow redesigns

This project laid the groundwork for:

These assets were later referenced in discussions about improving other workflows (e.g., proof of identity, benefit eligibility steps).

Alignment to Agency Priorities

Supporting SSA’s digital-first strategy

The tool directly advanced SSA’s goal of shifting more services online by:

Reinforcing commitments under Section 508 and Executive Orders on customer experience

The guided, mobile-first flow supported government-wide directives on:

Strengthening the foundation for end-to-end modernization

While this work focused on the public, non-secure portion of the card-request experience, it created momentum to explore improvements in:

This positioned the Enumeration domain for future transformation aligned with broader SSA modernization priorities.

The Broader Ripple

The SSN Card Request Tool demonstrates how targeted workflow improvements can reduce burden not only for the public, but also for SSA’s systems, staff, and service infrastructure. It’s a clear example of how thoughtful design creates ripple effects across operations, policy alignment, user satisfaction, and organizational performance.

6. Reflections and Future Direction - Summary, Lessons Learned, and Opportunities for Continued Improvement

Designing the SSN Card Request Tool reinforced a core lesson: even the most complex, policy-heavy workflows can be made clearer, more humane, and more navigable when we center real user needs and structure logic around their mental models rather than program rules.

What I Learned

Opportunities for Continued Improvement

Although we made substantial progress in simplifying the eligibility journey, several important opportunities remain:

Final Reflection

This project highlighted how impactful workflow design can be when grounded in research, collaboration, and iterative refinement. There is meaningful room to extend this approach across the full enumeration lifecycle—and I’m excited by the prospect of continuing this type of work where complex services need clarity and structure.

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