Information Architecture and Design Recommendations
Department of Labor
Scroll ↓
Streamlining the Department of Labor Website
The Department of Labor (DOL) website provides information about workers' rights to safe and healthy working conditions, lawful compensation and overtime pay, employment discrimination laws, unemployment insurance, and more. Understandably, these topics can be difficult for people to understand and quickly digest.
Our goal during this project was to identify current pain paints with navigation and design and to create an intuitive site for users to navigate.
Details
My Role: Researched and designed end-to-end experience. This was a project in the UX/UI bootcamp.
Duration: 3 weeks
Tools:
Figma/Figjam
Invision
Proto Persona
At the beginning of the research phase, we created a proto persona to help identify potential users and their needs when visiting the Department of Labor website. As we learned more about the website and its audience, we revised our persona to ensure Joe aligned with our target users.
Research
User Interviews
Since the Department of Labor website is chock-full of information, our goal was to identify navigation pain points that make it difficult for users to find the information they're looking for.
Heuristic Evaluations
We performed a heuristic evaluation and identified five primary issues:
Content-dense pages that overwhelm users
“Topics” dropdown includes 42 links and terminology is not always clear to users
Content on homepage doesn't represent what people are searching for
Unclear when a link will take you to a third-party site
Design is consistent but white space isn't always used effectively
Problem Statement
Our goal for the Department of Labor website is to help users navigate the overwhelming amount of information and find answers to their employment questions. Users do not visit the Department of Labor website for fun or entertainment, so it's imperative that the website's organization is intuitive and easy to navigate for first-time visitors.
We observed that users are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information on the Department of Labor website. They become frustrated since answers are spread across the site and content isn't always written in layman's terms.
How might we restructure the Department of Labor website to a provide a stress-free experience for users, in which they're able to navigate the site and quickly find the information they need?
Definition
Feature Prioritization
After completing the research phase, we compiled user insights and data points into an affinity diagram. Then we created a prioritization matrix to identify high-level priorities.
Card Sorting
On the current DOL site, the navigation bar includes 88 unique links, and 42 of those links are housed under "Topics." Users are forced to scan a long list of links to find what they're looking for.
To combat this problem, we sorted content into categories. Our intention was group content so that users can quickly scan the page and find what they're looking for.
Ideation
Sitemap
Our primary goal was to eliminate the vague “Topics” dropdown and separate content into easily understood buckets.
Low-Fidelity Designs
Our low-fidelity designs provided the ground work for layout and homepage prioritization. The designs gave us room to add visual interest (icons, images, and color blocking) with future iterations.
Style Guide
Our style guide was inspired by the current site, but we gave it a modern twist with updated iconography and green accent colors. The image samples focused on diversity and inclusion.
Iterations
Iterations: Round One
Darkened blue color for accessibility
Adjusted margins and spacing
Removed bullet points from homepage cards
Added components and colors from the style guide
Iterations: Round Two
The most significant edit was changing “For Employees” to “For Individuals” in the navigation dropdown. User tests showed that “For Employees” was not always clear.
Some users were confused why unemployment information was under an employees section and other users thought that “For Employees” was specific to DOL employees.
Final Designs
Designs
