SITUATION: A federal office was created in 2022 to distribute over $20B of federal funding, develop new research, and to lead a workforce development program started in the 1970s. Their site was hard for users to understand, and they often had calls to explain their mission and programs. The team wanted people to understand their mission and program structure from navigating the website, as well as how to apply for their offerings, and to demonstrate their investment success in an easy to understand way.

TASK: Streamline and restructure 87 page site to add clarity around their mission, offerings, and successes, as well as improve site metrics.

ACTION: I ran interviews and created a comprehensive preliminary style guide, heuristic review, personas, and journey maps. This work helped secure the yearlong project contract.

During the contract, I led of an agile team of three through additional UX research and interviews, prototyping, development, Drupal CMS administration, analytics, and testing. As manager, I also used CMMI framework (level 5) to analyze metrics such as risk exposure, managed our backlog and timelines, created client deliverables, and I ran project management reviews as well as twice weekly working group discussion. I additionally negotiated our option year contract.

DETAILED ACTIONS:
Mission:
-Created and wrote an “About Us” page
-Restructured site map by creating consistent pages for the Office's three areas of focus, and moved programs to these areas of focus rather than listing programs on pages for federal bills, whose names and purposes are not intuitive to the public

Applications:
-Created a template for federal funding categories applied to 13 pages that introduced standard terms and the use of application timelines
-Added statuses, dates, and clear links to each application
-Created an Application Guide

Investment Success:
-Developed an interactive map and searchable table of 270 Awardees using standard labels and links for overall site cohesion
-Created a page to describe and link to the office's analytics work

RESULTS: Within six months, our team decreased accessibility issues by 88.9% and improved mobile responsiveness by 53%. After one year, our updates had increased active users by 14% and engagement by 28%. The 2024 annual report additionally shows $12B total of awarded federal funds, a 500% increase from 2023’s reported $1.9B.