Leading with UX

Presenters: MariaT

This session will talk about how leading with user experience (UX) helps to mitigate design, development, and operational risk for large-scale federal Drupal design and build engagements.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS or “the Service”) maintains a public website (fws.gov) that consists of approximately 45,000 HTML pages; a large number of .pdf, video, graphics, PowerPoint, Flash, and other standard and proprietary files; databases, and applications. The FWS internet site architecture reflects the decentralized structure of the Service and is mostly a collection of micro-sites representing various offices and programs. The site is created and maintained by designers and content authors spread across hundreds of offices throughout the country.  

The Service is redesigning FWS.gov as part of the process of migrating to Drupal. From the outset, rather than being wedded to the existing site or any of its existing internal constructs, this redesign effort has been focused on determining what both the public and the Service need as the foundation for defining requirements and project scope. Limina worked with FWS to conduct a robust discovery and definition phase, including, but not limited to stakeholder workshops, business analysis, employee, public audience segmentation, and an audit of current state technology.  Through the use of empathy-based research and analysis, our team maintained focus on user experience, process efficiency, ease of use, and ultimately a sustainable approach to leveraging Drupal and extensible web tools.

By taking a user-centric approach to what would otherwise be a vehicle for outbound federal policy and regulatory functions, we set a new paradigm for addressing the public needs and driving the Service mission. This shift put a higher degree of emphasis on strategic direction, tactical requirements, and project scope for internal digital infrastructure to best support the internal employees who are charged with the creation, collaboration, and management of their internal and public digital assets as a critical factor necessary for improving citizen engagement.

The solution not only addressed Drupal best practices but also serves as a platform to drive higher efficiency in their transactions with various high volume constituents (grants, permits, consultations, import/export, etc.). The solutions span from design, taxonomy, and content type definition, to systems integration, web tools, data and content management and more.   Our methodology allows for the opportunity to strategically scope the work to both align with and maximize the opportunity to meet the most needs, with a minimum viable solution. We will discuss how to orchestrate both internal and external user research programs to ensure that federal agencies not only understand how to best meet public needs but also how to drive internal efficiencies to maximize the support of those needs.

The presentation will focus on the following points:

  • Managing large scale project across a decentralized organization - A holistic UX driven approach (gathering feedback from inside the Service and from the public)

  • How user research informed the project scope and approach, including details on the types of user research conducted and how each informed the definition of requirements and critical success factors

  • The importance of including internal and external stakeholders in the design and implementation process - how to continue building goodwill with target users while establishing a culture of continuous learning

  • Empowering federal employees for mission success - The importance of supporting FWS’s internal customers/users as a mechanism for strengthening the Service’s ability to better meet the needs of the public. Powerful workforce = Satisfied Public

  • Every User Experience driven solution will ultimately arrive at challenges that fall directly outside of the solution set. It’s important to think holistically at upstream/downstream processes, use cases, users and scenarios to ensure that the solution you have put forward can survive in the context of the larger ecosystem - We defined a dual system solution for internal operations to best support external affairs.

 

NOTE: This presentation will be co-presented by Limina and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Audience
Experience Level
Beginner
Schedule Info
Conference Year
2018
Status
Proposed
Session Track
Design, UX, and Accessibility