CASE STUDIES
Farm Production & Conservation Business Center Website
Background
The Business Center website was a new initiative for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. As the Lead Human-Centered Design Specialist, I co-launched the design of a website with a UX Manager along with a User Interface Developer, Sharepoint Developers, and a USDA Product Owner who was the end client.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges was to consolidate and migrate content from hundreds of webpage content pertaining to three different government agency websites from the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Risk Management Agency (RMA) with the help of a UI Developer, Help Desk, and Sharepoint Developers.
Consequently, user research was very limited and the discovery process was skipped since there was an absence of documentation to review. Moreover, user flows, personas, and user testing were not factored into the lifecycle of the project as a whole.
Responsibilities
I designed a clean and sophisticated user interface that was 508 compliant by closely following web standards from the U.S. Web Design Standards (USWDS) and the USDA branding guidelines. I made sure to follow the components and design tokens which were featured on the main government website.
U.S. Web Design System
https://designsystem.digital.gov
FPAC BC High-Fidelity Prototype
Header Section
Categories Section
News Section
Footer Section
Design Solutions
I decided to use a limited color palette for the website, which included blues, greens, and grays. I also chose typography that was clearly legible and easy to read on screen.
Consequently, I included rounded buttons and round icons to add a more contemporary look to the website. The photos were directly imported from the USDA’s large database of photographs and carefully selected according to each categories’ theme.
All additional front-end and back-end content was migrated from the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Risk Management Agency (RMA) with the help of Sharepoint Developers on my development team.
Farm Service Agency Website
Risk Management Agency Website
Natural Resources Conservation Service Website