Dept. of Labor
Case Study
Responsive Redesign
Team Members: Merrill FitzGerald, Sierra Swann
My Role: User researcher, designer
Tools Used: Adobe XD, Lightroom, Trello, Miro, InVision, Zoom, Google Slides
The Problem
Websites, just like everything in life, are not always perfect. Although perfection is practically unattainable, an improved version is always possible. The Department of Labor’s interface was cluttered with not only copious amounts of information, links, and news articles, but with too much white space and an array of hierarchical problems.
The Solution
For this project, I wanted to rearrange some of the pertinent information that made the website feel so overwhelming and impossible to navigate through. I was able to condense some of this information and highlight various topics that seemed, through research, to be more important than others.
Definition
User Persona
My partner and I developed a user persona in order to understand and determine what audience we were looking to target through this redesign. Initially, we came up with Gary Williams, a 58 year old welder who had been laid off due to an injury that left him unable to perform specific job duties. Gary wanted to find information regarding disability and or benefits on the DOL website, but as someone who was not particularly tech-savy, he was hoping the process wouldn’t be too difficult or time-consuming.
Initial Usability Testing Results
We initially had 4 users test the original Department of Labor website. Through testing, we concluded that all four users had similar struggles while navigating the website, along with responses and general frustrations. We discovered that the navigation as a whole, was complicated and overwhelming, especially for people who are only searching for one specific topic, answer to a question, contact information, etcetera.
Information Architecture
Annotations
Card Sorting
Site Map
Homepage Navigation Wireframes
Additional Wireframes
Visual Design
Style Tile #1
Homepage
Complete Redesign
Testing
Testing Notes -
Home button does not exist
Right corner maybe add indicator saying “back to home page”
Knows to click the logo but thinks other people might not always know to do this
Design seems consistent with other government websites
Overall, easy to navigate
Key Takeaways
Government websites seem to be notorious for overwhelming users with grandiose amounts of information, making it difficult for users to not only navigate on their desktop, but nearly impossible while using a mobile device.
As a UX/UI designer, it’s important to understand how these particular government websites are organized, how they function, and how functional they truly are in order to increase user attendance.
For this assignment, I focused on the key features the Department of Labor highlights and the way in which it was presented. I was able to reorganize the navigation and condense it into categories that, hopefully, would not make the user think.
I used consistent imagery throughout to elude a more personal connection with user targets and to give a clear direction to users as to what they might be searching for.