Idaho.gov
Project Overview
The goal of the Idaho.gov redesign was to give the State’s official homepage an updated look, reduce maintenance, and make overall improvements to allow citizens better access to the resources they are looking for.
My Contributions
Researcher, Designer, Project Manager, Developer, User-Testing
Timeframe
Research & Planning
In early 2018, I began research, user tests, and mockups for the Idaho.gov redesign. I conducted audits on the analytics to see which pages were not visited frequently as well as heat maps on popular pages to help identify popular features and some less-popular features that could be removed or re-worked.
Homepage mockups were presented to the decision committee at the State. Once a color palette and design were approved, I created additional mockups of a few interior pages and began planning the updates to the Online Services page.
With the redesign, we wanted to bring new features to Idaho.gov and improve some existing ones. For example, the “Local” section on the home page and individual county pages was a new feature that utilizes multiple APIs to provide more local information without additional maintenance.
Updates to the online services and agency directory pages were high priority as they are historically popular pages. The improvements to the online services page allows users to quickly type in the search field and filter by agency or category to find what they are looking for.
The search page also received a lot of attention. The new robust search, allows users to filter results by state agency and document type, while also including a highlighted section that lists online services available based on the search term entered.
Development
When building the new site out, limiting ongoing maintenance and improving website accessibility (WCAG 2.1 and Section 508) were first in mind. The new Idaho.gov was built in Jekyll and with the development and styling being completed by myself and a front end developer. APIs are utilized throughout the local sections of the site to keep the information fresh and up to date.
