In Washington, grand promises come and go like the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin. Some bloom spectacularly, some fall before they’ve even opened. This week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create what he calls the National Design Studio, a three-year experiment in aesthetics and efficiency that sounds more like a Bauhaus offshoot than a federal office. Its stated mission? To “breathe new life into the design of sites where people interface with their Government.”
If that phrasing feels aspirational, the appointment that followed was even more eyebrow-raising: Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and Silicon Valley’s reigning apostle of sleek digital minimalism, will become the nation’s first Chief Design Officer. Think Don Draper meets Steve Jobs, except tasked not with selling you a dream vacation but with helping you file your taxes without feeling like you’ve aged ten years.
The National Design Studio (NDS) is being billed as a reset button on the Trump-era Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a short-lived venture once helmed by Elon Musk that promised to cut bureaucracy to the bone but ended in acrimony and tweets. Where DOGE was slashing and consolidating, NDS is promising something far more cultural: a facelift for America’s public interface. If Musk’s mantra was move fast and break things, Gebbia’s may be slow down and make things usable.
At stake is no less than the digital credibility of the federal government. Anyone who has attempted to navigate Healthcare.gov during open enrollment, wrestled with the IRS website on April 14th, or tried to renew a passport online knows that the federal user experience is often a hall of mirrors. Trump’s order bluntly admitted as much, lamenting the “digital potholes” of legacy systems that cost citizens time and the government money.
Gebbia is no stranger to government work. He quietly advised the federal human resources agency on redesigning the retirement process—one of the most bureaucratic labyrinths in Washington—and is said to have made measurable improvements. Now, the White House has handed him something much larger: not just making government work, but making it feel modern, even beautiful.
If it works, the payoff could be enormous. A unified federal design language could save billions in duplicative IT contracts, boost public trust, and—dare we say—make civic life a little less miserable. Imagine renewing your Social Security benefits on a site that doesn’t look like it was designed in 2003, or applying for disaster relief without needing three different logins and a law degree.
Of course, design is never just design. It’s politics, power, and money in typography and layout. Will Gebbia have the autonomy to bring in top designers from the private sector? Will agencies jealously guard their patchwork systems? And how long will a Chief Design Officer last in a city that measures loyalty not in pixels but in patronage?
The National Design Studio is temporary by design—sunsetting in three years unless extended. That expiration date may be the wisest part of the plan. It creates urgency. It forces results before the next administration takes office. And it spares Washington the spectacle of another sprawling bureaucracy trying to reinvent bureaucracy.
If history is any guide, the NDS will be judged not by policy memos but by pixels. Can you apply for Medicare without hitting a 404 error? Does the IRS site stop looking like a time machine from the dial-up era? Will ordinary Americans—Democrat, Republican, or otherwise—say: finally, a government website that doesn’t make me want to throw my laptop out the window?
Joe Gebbia has three years to prove that design can be destiny. Washington may scoff, but for a nation staring down both a technological revolution and a crisis of faith in its institutions, beauty and efficiency may not just be luxuries—they may be the only way forward.