CASE STUDIES
Farm Service Agency Website
Background
The Farm Service Agency website was in the process of being re-designed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. As the Lead Human Centered Design Specialist, I co-led the life-cycle of the face-lift design with the New River Systems team consisting of a UX Manager, a UI Developer, several Sharepoint Developers and a USDA team lead client.
Challenges
The Farm Service Agency showed many signs of usability issues and many users complained that they were not able to easily find information that they were looking for because of a poor information architecture/ disorganized sitemap and a haphazard hierarchy of information.
Users had difficulty using the search bar in the top navigation section, as well as struggled to find answers from the Ask FSA database.
Furthermore, the website was bloated with outdated content which negatively impacted the overall user experience for many user groups.
FSA High-Fidelity Mockups
Header Section
Categories Section
Resources Section
News Section
Footer Section
Research Findings
In looking at data analytics from the Hotjar application, I found out that many users were leaving the FSA website at a very high volume. The alarming factor was that the bounce rate was 97% before the re-design effort was set into motion.
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.
Design Solutions
I chose a color palette that closely resembles the look and feel of the Farmers.gov website. The green menu bar, teal category sections, and yellow highlight color were inspired from that website as well. Consequently, the line icons also matched the same style as those found on the Farmers.gov website. The photos were imported from the USDA’s photography database system and carefully selected to match the different sections.
Farmers.gov Website
https://www.farmers.gov