EXOTELL
Guidance Series — Foundational Concepts
Eligibility as User Experience
exotell.com | May 2026
The application of human-centered design principles to government services has gained significant momentum over the past decade. Yet the field has often focused on transactional interfaces—how a form looks, how a website navigates—rather than on the upstream design of eligibility itself. Eligibility is not merely a legal question or a policy question. It is, fundamentally, a user experience.
Administrative Burden as Experience
The most influential framework for understanding eligibility as user experience comes from the administrative burden literature. Donald Moynihan of the University of Michigan's Better Government Lab and Pamela Herd of Georgetown University have defined administrative burden as people's experience of policy implementation as onerous. Their research identifies three types of costs that applicants absorb when navigating eligibility processes: learning costs (the effort required to understand what a program offers and whether one qualifies), compliance costs (the time, money, and effort required to apply and document eligibility), and psychological costs (the stress, stigma, and loss of autonomy associated with applying for benefits).
These costs are not evenly distributed. As the Administrative Conference of the United States has noted, administrative burden disproportionately affects populations with fewer resources to absorb compliance demands—the same populations that benefit programs are typically designed to serve. A financial aid system that requires multiple forms, sequential documentation, institutional follow-up, and professional navigation imposes the highest burdens on first-generation students, students from low-income families, and students without access to college counseling.
Human-Centered Design in Practice
Human-centered design (HCD) offers a methodology for reorienting eligibility systems around applicant experience. The Office of Management and Budget defines HCD as a technique to understand administrative process from the user's perspective and then use those insights to adjust processes to better match human capacities. Applied to eligibility, this means beginning with research into how applicants actually experience processes—not how administrators imagine they do—and redesigning touchpoints to reduce unnecessary friction.
Agencies that have adopted HCD approaches to eligibility have documented tangible results. Moynihan's research has found that automatic benefit renewal processes can significantly increase Medicaid coverage, reducing the re-application burden that causes eligible recipients to lose coverage during administrative renewal cycles. The U.S. Digital Service and 18F have documented similar findings in unemployment insurance and other benefit programs. GovLoop has noted that poorly designed systems create barriers, increase administrative burden, and erode trust, while HCD produces solutions that are less error-prone and require less help-desk support.
Checkpoints, Friction, and Drop-Off
Herd, Moynihan, and colleagues have introduced the concept of administrative checkpoints—mandatory requirements that a user must complete in order to proceed in an administrative process. In financial aid, checkpoints include creating a StudentAid.gov account, gathering tax documentation, obtaining contributor consent for IRS data exchange, meeting institutional verification requirements, and responding to requests for additional information. Each checkpoint is a potential drop-off point, particularly for applicants who face competing demands on their time or limited digital literacy.
Research on SNAP and other benefit programs suggests that reducing the number and complexity of administrative checkpoints can substantially increase program participation among eligible individuals without meaningful increases in error rates or fraud. The design implication is clear: friction in eligibility processes is not neutral. It functions as a de facto restriction on access, and reducing it expands participation without changing the fundamental rules of eligibility.
Eligibility Experience and Institutional Trust
The experience of navigating an eligibility system also shapes applicants' relationship with the institutions administering it. Systems that feel opaque, arbitrary, or burdensome erode trust—not only in the specific program but in institutional actors more broadly. Conversely, systems that communicate clearly, provide responsive feedback, and treat applicants with dignity build the kind of institutional trust that supports long-term engagement. For educational institutions, this has direct implications for enrollment, retention, and student success.
Exotell's guidance system treats eligibility as a user experience to be actively designed—not a gauntlet to be endured. The goal is to reduce learning costs by making eligibility logic legible, reduce compliance costs by guiding applicants through documentation requirements, and reduce psychological costs by treating the process of seeking support as normal, expected, and dignified.
References
- Herd, P., & Moynihan, D. (2018). Administrative burden: Policymaking by other means. Russell Sage Foundation.
- Moynihan, D., Herd, P., Jilke, S., & Rodden, K. (2025). Administrative checkpoints, burdens, and human-centered design: Increasing interview access to raise SNAP participation. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pam.70007
- Administrative Conference of the United States. (2023). Identifying and reducing burdens on the public in administrative processes. https://www.acus.gov/document/identifying-and-reducing-burdens-public-administrative-processes
- GovLoop. (2025). Embracing human-centered design in government software development. https://www.govloop.com/community/blog/embracing-human-centered-design-in-government-software-development/
- Last Call Media. (2025). Human-centered design for government agencies. https://lastcallmedia.com/blog/human-centered-design-government-agencies-benefits-challenges-real-examples