User Experience Audits

Help your constituents get what they need from your website or other service touchpoints

Why user experience audits?

Many constituents now primarily engage with government services online, but few governments have the capacity to design online resources that efficiently meet their users’ needs. U.S. Digital Response (USDR) uses human-centered design practices to help your website meet your users' needs, from directing them to the latest information about an urgent situation to increasing sign-ups for critical services.

USDR volunteers can work with your team to understand the audiences you need to reach, what they need, and how to modify your site to deliver on those needs. USDR makes recommendations to that help all residents, including those difficult to reach or traditionally underserved, use your site to achieve their goals. We believe in a world where government services are straightforward to understand and access, and we believe this begins with your online presence.

Selected case studies

Mesa County Public Health
Helping residents of Mesa County, CO learn how to “get back to normal”

In the spring of 2021, Mesa County’s Public Health website offered a wealth of COVID-19 resources, but they still found residents calling in to ask for information that was on the website. They engaged USDR to streamline their content so that their diverse, multilingual residents could sign up for vaccines, understand reopening phases, and learn about testing.

By analyzing the website traffic, the USDR team observed how users were currently interacting with the site: they were visiting from mobile phones; they were searching for pages they needed instead of navigating to them from the homepage; and they were visiting the Data Dashboard instead of more critical pages because it was the first call to action on the COVID-19 hub.

Armed with these insights, the team made recommendations to Mesa County to center their vaccine sign-up, improve links to important secondary pages, and optimize for mobile browsing. The team measured their success in increased vaccine and testing signups and a reduction in the call volume.

Read the full case study »Read more about this project »
Team members
Gina Kelly
VP Digital Solutions
,
ClearEdge Marketing
Richa Srivastava
Senior Marketing Program Manager
,
Facebook
Amie Nisler
Senior Communications Strategist
,
Bixal
Pueblo Department of Public Health & Environment
Improving vaccine webpage content and design

Pueblo County needed to quickly communicate ever-changing COVID-19 information to the community while freeing up staff time to address other local concerns. The County wanted to update its website to be informative and accessible, with a particular focus on how to get a vaccine.

The USDR team partnered on a user experience and content audit of Pueblo County’s COVID-19 pages. The audit provided tactical design and communication recommendations that addressed navigation, content organization, plain language, visual design, and taxonomy. Using those recommendations, the team then designed new responsive webpages and mobile experiences for the County.

Read the full case study »Read more about this project »
Team members
Edward Alton
Senior UX Designer
,
Ad Hoc
Micah Mitrux
Project Delivery Lead
,
Code for BTV
Andrew Hsieh
Content Design
,
Meta
Pilar Strutin-Belinoff
Product Manager
,
Prepared Parents
Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry
Helping PA users find and access unemployment services

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry sought to make targeted improvements to its website’s core landing pages so that Pennsylvanians could seamlessly access and connect to any of the department’s diverse services. The PA team wanted to ensure any Pennsylvanian could quickly get to the service that they needed regardless of past experience with the department or knowledge of its bureaucratic structure.

The USDR volunteer team used Google Analytics and user surveys to develop a series of UX recommendations to improve customers’ ability to find information about services provided by the department. The team created a new homepage design that created a hierarchy of content putting the most frequently used links at the top, used empathetic language to steer users to the right service, and included a self-identification flow for users who don’t know exactly what they need. They delivered web and mobile mock-ups as well as a design system for the PA team to use as they refresh the rest of their pages.


Read the full case study »Read more about this project »
Team members
Barbara Nasto
Acting Managing Director
,
Rare Charity
Katherine Fairbanks
Senior User Experience Designer
,
Cisco
Grace Ou
Product Manager
,
Invitae
Left
Right

Meet the team

Grace Ou
Grace is a cancer researcher turned product manager with a passion for using her analytical skills to help others. She has worked in pharma, tech startups, and is currently a product manager at a genetic screening company in the Bay Area.
Mariángel Villalobos
Mariángel Villalobos is a bilingual Qualitative UX Researcher and PhD candidate. In addition to USDR, she has carried out research for University of Maryland, Smithsonian Institution, and Library of Congress.
Nina Yang
Nina is a UX practitioner who has worked at many at early to mid stage technology companies. She's a detail-oriented designer who believes that research and collaboration are key points in creating great experiences and products.
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