Case Study : Website Interface Design

Client: U.S. Representative Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney

Category: Government | Political

Website: maloney.house.gov

Description: U.S. Congressional website for Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-New York)

Challenge

Shifting user needs, outdated technology, unintuitive information architecture and cluttered design demanded a revolutionary redesign of the Congresswoman's website. Congresswoman Maloney tapped Barbara Lynn to develop the new site's strategy, information architecture, visual design and ensure the project met all specifications.

"I trust you to get it right", she said.

Results

Press Release: Website wins 'Gold Mouse Award', Top Prize for Congressional Sites

Considered one of the best sites on “The Hill”, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney was presented with the prestigious GOLD MOUSE AWARD for the first time when the new site launched at the end of 2006. The Congressional Management Foundation, the body that presented the award, states:

"While the sheer volume of information on this site could be overwhelming, the UNCLUTTERED SITE DESIGN, it's INNOVATIVE LAYOUT and INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE makes it thoroughly usable."

The Work

Through our research, we discovered that constituents could not easily find information and that Congressional Administrative staff were frustrated by the inability to manage content efficiently. A virtual office and library was needed.

Worked closely with congressional administrative staff to identify organizational challenges and goals as well as constituent needs. Crafted high level needs analysis and RFP, interviewed and selected the Technical Implementation Partner.

We recommended using a flexible, State-of-the-Art Open Source Development Platform. This was the first website on "The Hill" to do so and many others have since followed the lead. It not only saved time, money and increased productivity but enabled Congressional Administrative Staff members to track, sort, filter, organize and update content online as well as maintain a professional, consistent look and feel across the entire site.

Information architecture was carefully planned to provide targeted information for specific audiences used to having their needs met online, encourage user interaction with the Congresswoman and make finding, searching and organizing a library of informational content and related documents and media of all types online a breeze. Flow charts were fine tuned in collaborative working sections with Congressional Staff and the Technical Implementation Partner.

Bridged the gap between Congressional Staff and the back-end implementation partner by creating detailed visual interaction design models and HTML/CSS prototypes that were easily translated into the Content Management System and abstracted to database schemata.

Site testing and quality control. Ensured project met all specifications at every step of the way.

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