The U.S. Just Added a Chief Design Officer. Now What?
#020: The U.S. just named its first Chief Design Officer, but with US Digital Service dismantled for parts and Silicon Valley at the helm, will this be civic design’s big moment or another dead end?
Last week the White House issued an executive order titled “Improving Our Nation Through Better Design,” launching a national initiative called America by Design and establishing a National Design Studio inside the Executive Office of the President. The order directs agencies to work with a newly created Chief Design Officer (CDO), update the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), and deliver initial results by July 4, 2026.
Days later, the administration confirmed that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia will serve as the first U.S. Chief Design Officer. His remit: standardize federal web experiences, recruit design talent for “tours of duty,” and bring a sense of “Apple Store-like” clarity.
On its face, the move suggests a bold, new commitment to design at the highest levels of government. But the choice of Gebbia — laden with conflicts of interest and Silicon Valley baggage — combined with the fact that this same administration dismantled the U.S. Digital Service and 18F just months ago, casts a long shadow over the promise of America by Design.
What the order actually does
Creates the role & studio. The CDO sits within a National Design Studio in the White House; the studio is led by an Administrator who reports to the Chief of Staff. The EO sets up a temporary organization for three years, signaling a push for quick, demonstrable wins.
Sets deadlines & guardrails. Agencies must consult the CDO, prioritize high-impact public-facing sites, and show initial results by July 4, 2026. The GSA is directed to update USWDS consistent with the order, and agencies must ensure compliance with the 21st Century IDEA law.
Opens hiring pathways. The CDO is tasked with recruiting private-sector designers and can leverage mechanisms like the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) to bring talent in quickly.
The appointment and the baggage
Gebbia’s design resume is undeniable: Airbnb’s early product breakthroughs are case studies in service design at scale. But his appointment comes with significant baggage.
The DOGE connection. Earlier this year Gebbia worked with Elon Musk’s DOGE, which was justly criticized for its slash-and-burn approach to federal operations.
Airbnb backlash. When he joined DOGE, Airbnb hosts and activists called for boycotts, forcing the company to publicly distance itself from his political activities. Those same critics now see a co-founder of Airbnb shaping federal design policy.
Conflicts of interest. Gebbia still sits on the boards of Tesla and Airbnb. That puts him squarely in federal ethics territory: will he divest, recuse, or face ongoing scrutiny about how private-sector interests intersect with public service design?
Housing credibility gap. Housing advocates point out that Airbnb’s growth has worsened affordability in many cities. Having its co-founder now tasked with “making life easier for Americans” creates a credibility gap, especially for renters and lower-income communities.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: this is another rich, white man from Silicon Valley stepping into a federal role where empathy for the everyday American is critical. There is little in Gebbia’s track record to suggest he will prioritize the research methodologies and participatory design practices needed to understand and serve the people who most rely on government systems: veterans seeking healthcare, immigrants navigating the naturalization process, low-income families applying for assistance. My fear is that he’ll bring a product-aesthetics mindset rather than a public-service design ethos.
Remember USDS and 18F?
This isn’t the first time the federal government has tried to bring design and technology talent into the heart of public service. In 2014, the Obama administration launched the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) after the HealthCare.gov meltdown, recruiting top engineers and designers to fix critical systems. It wasn’t just a rescue team — it became a model for civic technology, embedding itself in agencies and delivering measurable impact. USDS helped the Social Security Administration achieve a 53% increase in customer satisfaction, modernized veterans’ healthcare access for millions, and pushed agencies toward plain language, accessibility, and service-focused outcomes.
Running alongside USDS was 18F, a digital consultancy within the GSA that partnered directly with agencies to modernize procurement and deliver services faster. Together, these groups demonstrated what human-centered, tech-enabled public service could look like. They were messy, imperfect, and often swimming upstream—but they worked.
And then, this year, both were dismantled. USDS was stripped for parts and rebranded as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — its mission hollowed out, its staff scattered, its ethos of empathy and collaboration replaced with efficiency mandates and cost-cutting edicts. 18F was eliminated entirely, shuttered almost overnight despite being one of the few places inside government where designers and engineers could work shoulder-to-shoulder with civil servants on real problems. Many of the people who had dedicated their careers to civic technology resigned en masse rather than lend credibility to DOGE’s new direction.
That history should give us pause. The United States already had an infrastructure for civic design, and it was dismantled a decade after it was built. Which begs the question: is this new Chief Design Officer role a genuine rebirth of that mission, or a shinier coat of paint on a broken foundation?
The big opportunities, if politics don’t sink them
Despite the baggage, this is a rare opening. The United States has never had a centralized design mandate at this scale, tied directly to the White House. If Gebbia and the National Design Studio can move past the optics and conflicts, there is enormous potential to finally tackle the broken, frustrating service journeys that shape people’s everyday lives. The question is whether the role will focus on glossy redesigns or on the deeper, structural changes that determine whether Americans can actually access the benefits and services they’re entitled to.
One front door for life events
If America by Design moves beyond “website reskins” to service journeys (e.g., having a child, starting a business, renewing documents), it could dramatically reduce paperwork and errors. The EO nudges this by prioritizing “websites and physical sites that have a major impact on Americans’ everyday lives.”USWDS as a true platform
If USWDS evolves into an opinionated design-and-code platform with accessible defaults and migration playbooks, agencies could finally stop reinventing the same forms from scratch.Talent pipelines into public service
The CDO’s recruiting mandate could normalize rotating cohorts of civic designers — a kind of Peace Corps for design. If done right, it plants the seed of a durable civic design corps.
The real risks
The executive order emphasizes “beauty” alongside usability. That framing is risky. If “beautiful” becomes the north star, we may end up with sleek portals that still fail to get people their benefits. Critics argue Gebbia’s retail design analogies, like the Apple Store comparison, risk over-simplifying civic complexity.
More importantly, design leadership in government isn’t about taste — it’s about equity, access, and deep empathy for populations with the least margin for error. If the new CDO doesn’t ground this initiative in rigorous research, inclusive design practices, and fieldwork with real Americans, the National Design Studio risks becoming a showcase of Silicon Valley aesthetics rather than a transformation of public service.
What success would look like
The executive order sets a big, symbolic milestone: “results by July 4, 2026.” But the language is frustratingly vague. What counts as a result? A redesigned landing page? A pilot project inside a single agency? A glossy report? Without defined accountabilities, it risks becoming an expensive experiment that celebrates aesthetics without actually improving how Americans access services.
The 21st Century IDEA law already lays out baseline success criteria for federal digital services:
Websites and applications must be mobile-friendly and accessible.
They must be searchable, secure, and fully functional on common devices.
Services must provide a consistent look and feel, use plain language, and support digital forms and electronic signatures.
Agencies must continuously measure and improve usability through analytics and customer satisfaction tools.
That’s better than nothing—but still generalized. IDEA tells agencies what should happen, but not how much better the experience should get, or by when.
All taxpayers should demand clarity here. If we are funding a National Design Studio at the White House, then success must be measured against hard, public metrics. At minimum:
Time-to-task: Median minutes to complete top tasks (pay taxes, renew passports, apply for benefits) should decrease by at least 30% year-over-year.
Completion & abandonment: Application completion rates should rise significantly, with measurable drops in abandonment rates.
Accessibility & equity: Independent audits should confirm WCAG 2.2 AA or higher conformance across prioritized sites, backed by usability testing with veterans, immigrants, people with disabilities, low-income families, and others who rely most on these systems.
Error reduction: Error rates in online forms (mismatched IDs, failed uploads, processing failures) should drop dramatically, with transparent reporting.
Findability: Success rates for search on federal websites should increase, with fewer “zero results” dead-ends.
Developer velocity: Agencies adopting the updated USWDS should be able to ship standard components and workflows in a fraction of the time it takes today.
Without this level of specificity, the July 2026 deadline is little more than a patriotic headline. IDEA gives us a floor, but not a ceiling. If the government is serious about design as infrastructure, it owes the public clear, transparent metrics of progress—and the courage to publish them.
Civic design as the missing “green light” pathway
In my Ethical Green Lights issue, I argued that designers need more viable pathways to serve the public good, beyond extractive corporate ecosystems. A national design role inside the White House is, in some ways, exactly that: a chance to embed design talent where it can impact millions of lives for the better.
But here’s the rub: instead of elevating civic technologists and service designers who have been quietly building this capacity for years — the very people who made the USDS and 18F effective — the administration chose yet another Silicon Valley billionaire. That choice risks undercutting the very promise of a civic design pathway — one grounded in empathy, research, and co-design with the people most impacted by broken government services. If America by Design is to become the “green light” we’ve been waiting for, it will require shifting focus away from aesthetics and tech pedigree, and toward the messy, human work of true public service design.
Bottom line
This is the most ambitious federal design initiative in decades, and one of the most politically fraught. If Gebbia and the National Design Studio focus on service journeys, accessibility, and measurable outcomes, and if they build in true research and empathy practices, this could redefine how Americans interact with their government.
But if politics, conflicts of interest, or an over-reliance on Silicon Valley aesthetics dominate, we’ll end up with the same old broken forms wrapped in a shinier (gold-plated?) interface.
Everything will be golden and tacky.