Annie Wang is a rising sophomore studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. This summer, she was a Coding it Forward Civic Digital Fellow working with the STRIDES Initiative team at the Center for Information Technology (CIT). Annie worked remotely from Cincinnati, Ohio, with co-fellow Bob Zhao and mentors Nick Weber and Joel Peterson.
“My independent project was developing a wordmark and visual identity for STRIDES,” Wang shared. “Part of that was doing things like design workshops, bringing outside design thinking and human-centered design practices and exercises into government to facilitate the process of getting to a wordmark.”
Wang’s independent project complemented a second project she worked on with Zhao—the STRIDES web presence.
Zhao said, “Annie and I thought about how to develop a website that has more in-depth information about STRIDES best practices, training, information, news and doing so in a user-friendly manner.”
Most offices take on one fellow to work on a specific project, but Weber and Peterson were intentional in taking two fellows who would work collaboratively on a project along with independent tasks.
“We needed two different avenues to tackle this project and I really liked the idea of having fellows work on their project collaboratively,” explained Peterson. “Annie and Bob…do remarkable work together and I think they bring the best out of each other whereas independently, I don't know that this project would have nearly the output that we've seen from these two.”
For Wang, the depth and breadth of web design standards that government agencies follow was eye-opening.
“I was pretty shocked to find out that government was developing all of these standards…especially with regard to accessibility and section 508 compliance,” Wang admitted. “I came into this thinking that there was no design standard in government, and I was definitely proven wrong!”
The Office of Data Science Strategy at NIH works with institutes and centers like CIT and with Coding it Forward to bring fresh perspectives to tackle computational challenges facing the biomedical research workforce each summer. ODSS will feature fellows and mentors from the 2020 cohort throughout the summer. Meet Annie's co-fellow, Bob.
