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Furthermore, the website was bloated with outdated content which negatively impacted the overall user experience for many user groups.

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.