Two weeks ago, President Trump announced America By Design, a new federal initiative to improve Americans’ experiences using government services, such as when renewing a passport, applying for a small business loan, or filing taxes. It includes updating the government’s design language and the websites and physical sites that have a major impact on Americans’ everyday lives. Trump has appointed the country’s first chief design officer, Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, and created a National Design Studio to help agencies implement changes, with initial results expected by July 4, 2026.
What’s Promising About This New Initiative?
Here’s what’s encouraging about America By Design:
It mandates that public experiences become more usable. Prioritizing design is a significant shift in a space where design often takes a back seat to competing priorities. Mandating that agencies work with skilled designers to improve experiences sends a signal that design is essential. Mandates have had a powerful effect on making experiences accessible, for example, so mandating better design could very well lead to positive results for Americans.
It may drive broader adoption of the government’s design system. The U.S. Web Design System was launched in 2015 by 18F and the U.S. Digital Service, but its use does not appear to be widespread — although some agencies such as the VA and the NIH Library have adopted it. The new chief design officer has an opportunity to treat the design system as a product, which means funding cross-discipline teams of designers and developers, creating a contribution model, and establishing telemetry and metrics to track usage and effectiveness.
It renews (at least part of) the attention that Trump gave to CX in his first term. The first Trump administration continued the White House’s spotlight on customer experience (CX), supported by the bipartisan 21st Century IDEA Act. That law called for public websites to be accessible, searchable, secure, mobile-ready, and efficient at meeting users’ needs. Additionally, CX initiatives and metrics were tracked at performance.gov, including actions taken by high-impact service providers to improve critical government services — such as checking for Medicaid eligibility and applying for and receiving disaster aid. Performance.gov has laid dormant under the current administration, but this executive order may presage the release of the President’s Management Agenda (which drives what gets managed and reported) and, with it, renewed tracking of digital service performance at the touchpoint and journey level.
Why We’re Not Convinced That This Spells Good News For Design
It’s unlikely that this initiative will create meaningful improvements for Americans because:
It’s overly focused on aesthetics rather than the true purpose of design. Joe Gebbia’s post on X comparing government services to the “beautifully designed” Apple Store experience is a parity trap and a classic example of low design literacy. Apple’s designs show a balance of form and function, understanding that a beautiful but unusable design is bad design. When designers deeply understand user needs, they create experiences that are effective, intuitive, and emotionally resonant. Beauty is the outcome of empathy and curiosity, not the goal. If the initiative prioritizes visual appearance over usability, meaningful service improvements will not follow.
It risks lowering the standard for quality design. The government has historically set the floor for what good design is, not the ceiling — especially in areas like accessibility. Yet accessibility isn’t mentioned in the executive order, and ironically, the America By Design website is inaccessible, with issues such as poor color contrast and a flag animation that can’t be paused. Despite feedback from experts, to date, these problems remain unfixed. While the legal foundation for accessibility is still strong, there’s a risk here: If the standards developed and mandated under this order are adopted, sacrificing accessibility in pursuit of questionable aesthetics, many Americans will be shut out. If the private sector follows suit, the risk could be magnified to levels that digitally disenfranchise millions of Americans.
The government already had (and fired) strong design talent. That talent sat in 18F and the U.S. Digital Service (before it was renamed and retasked to become DOGE); both shut down earlier this year. The new chief design officer is tasked with recruiting private-sector designers, but there’s no acknowledgement of past designers’ contributions to improving government services or plans to recover lost expertise. Design is most successful when it’s embedded in the organization and informed by domain knowledge, so regaining that insight and knowledge will be critical to the initiative’s success.
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