U.S. Forest Service

Rapid prototyping for online firewood permits

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) sells permits to harvest certain forest products like firewood and mushrooms from national lands. But, these permits needed to be purchased in-person at a remote ranger stations with limited hours, and used permitting systems that were difficult to maintain and scale.

I led prototyping and user research to quickly identify what permit seekers, frontline staff, law enforcement, and stakeholders would need to sell firewood permits online, and flag opportunities for broader permitting modernization. This work built the foundation for an online permitting application that's now launched and available to the public.

This was a 4-month long project, done in close collaboration with a product manager, researcher, engineer, and program staff.

Contributions:
Rapid prototyping In-person and remote research Usability testing Service mapping Extending design systems Design documentation

USFS needed scalable, modern tools to deliver better permitting experiences to the public

Forest product sales are a core revenue stream for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Every year, the agency sells 5.5 million cubic feet of timber to commercial partners and the public. These permits also give the public low-cost access to firewood, mushrooms, and other natural resources from national lands.

But, the core IT system behind forest product permits— the Timber Information Manager (TIM) — was outdated and difficult to scale. For permit seekers, this meant they had to travel to remote ranger stations to purchase a permit in-person, and often faced limited buisness hours and system downtime. Frontline staff and system administrators faced frustrating errors when issuing permits and workarounds to get the data they needed for forest planning and restoration efforts.

18F partnered with USFS to support a long-term modernization effort for TIM, starting with firewood permits to deliver immediate value while setting the foundation for broader modernization of the forest product marketplace.

Focusing design hypotheses through lightweight paper prototypes

Working with the team, I designed a lightweight, four screen flow to facilitate conversation on three key milestones for online firewood permits:

  • Locating a forest and a product: Permit information was often housed deep within individual forest pages. We wanted to explore a service-centered experience where permit seekers could access multiple types of permits (firewood, Christmas trees) from multiple forests with a consistent flow.
  • Completing a sale: We wanted to know what was the minimum amount of information needed to process a sale and issue a permit.
  • Method for accessing permits and tags: We wanted to encourage discussion on how to distribute permits to buyers and issue tags so that they could prove a purchase while harvesting.

I led sketching exercises with the team to narrow in on a V0 approach to bring to the field. Our sessions considered existing firewood permitting regulations, audits of online content, and conversations with stakeholders. This also included auditing the Christmas Tree permit pilot and Open Forest Design System to identify patterns for potential reuse.

Mockups of web pages for selecting a forest and purchasing a permit
Within the first month of the project, I identified our key research questions and developed a lightweight prototype. I printed these pages out and brought them to the field to guide conversations with frontliners and members of the public.
A collage of photos from a research trip to Mt. Hood National Forest.
The team and I visited two ranger stations in Mt. Hood National Forest to observe in-person permit sales and test early stage prototypes. We spoke with frontliners, USFS law enforcement, and members of the public. I used the information given to permit seekers to inform the next iteration of the prototype, including land owner maps, permit regulations, weekly firewood information sheets, and general harvesting advice.

Mapping end-to-end actions, data, and systems needed to issue permits

To synthesize what we'd learned in the field and in stakeholder interviews, I created a service blueprint, then filled the gaps collaboratively with program and IT managers. These live editing sessions with staff helped validate in real time that we were capturing system interactions accurately.

A service map showing the number of steps needed to buy and issue a permit.
The service blueprint I created to synthesize what we observed and what we had learned about forest policy, existing systems, enforcement, and friction points. This also quickly showed what we needed to learn more about. I led collaborative sessions with Forest Service staff to map together those sections of the map and get a more complete view of the system.

The final blueprint documented gave us a full accounting of

  • Visible actions for getting a firewood permit (permit seeker to frontline staff, frontline staff to office systems, law enforcement to permit holders)
  • Unseen system interactions (how permit sales funds are distributed and reported)
  • Dependancies and constraints influencing the full process (purchasing policies, resourcing, forrest planning)

The team used this map to clarify constraints and highlight places where we could integrate new tooling to issue permits online.

Prototying to validate third-party integrations, printable tag hypotheses, and Open Forest Design patterns

Using insights from field visits and mapping sessions, my next prototype iteration included:

  • Testing interactions and end-to-end flow: Developed a clickable prototype to go through the whole process of purchasing a permit, and led usability tests to verify we had core functionality and content design right.
  • Leveraged patterns from the Open Forest Design System: Extended the Open Forest design system to a new permitting type and ensured consistency, scalability, and alignment with federal standards and Forest Service branding.
  • Developed a printable load tag concept: Designed a printable permit tag with visual cues for law enforcement and evaluated it with stakeholders for fit with existing enforcement workflows.
  • Shipped with documentation for scale: Captured key learnings, design debt, and research artifacts to empower future teams to build confidently on our work.
Four screens showing the flow of an online firewood permitting prototype.
Screens of a digital firewood prototype for the U.S. Forest Service. Since this was a new online service, a core prototyping goal was to identify and clarify what information needed to be provided to and collected from permit seekers. We also wanted to see how members of the public would respond to integrated services like Login.gov and Pay.gov, and how to set expectations appropriately.
A collage of load tag photos and sketches.
ermit holders currently get brightly colored load tags when they buy their permit from a ranger station, which signal to USFS law enforcement that a vehicle has a permit. I developed a printable load tag concept through design studios with the team, and landed on a concept using high contrast patterns.

Additional resources