Our work
City of Louisville, Colorado
The brief: The City of Louisville was embarking on a multi-year website redesign. Their goal was to meet state accessibility standards, improve usability, and choose a CMS that would make life easier for staff.
What we did:
Discovery research
We met with staff across 14 departments, learning about what was and wasn’t working well with the current site. We synthesized this research into an internal user research report.
We then surveyed over 300 residents. We wanted to understand what the most pressing challenges were, and what residents wanted the new site to be like. (Multiple residents used a write-in answer to beg us not to include an AI chatbot).
With this research in hand, we then moved into a website revision and planning stage, focusing on improved accessibility, stronger content governance, and a new information architecture.
Accessibility training
We provided training for staff across the City, including:
- Introduction to digital accessibility
- Creating content for the new website
- Writing in plain language
- Creating accessible images and documents
Platform requirements & procurement
Working with the Project Steering Committee, we generated platform requirements for the new site, reflecting what we’d learned during our discovery research. We then helped identify, vet, and select a new CMS provider.
Navigation & information architecture design
A key priority for staff and residents was improved navigation and findability. We designed a new information architecture and navigation plan for the site, creating a site that is:
- Shallow (< 5 levels)
- Focused on services and tasks
- User-oriented while structured for easy maintenance by department staff
Usability testing
Working with our CMS vendor, we conducted usability testing to make sure that our new information architecture and navigation design would work for residents. We conducted this testing with 350 residents, ultimately making minor revisions to reflect our test findings.
Content migration
Working with a group of department staff, we helped oversee the content migration process. We created content for every department, working to revise pages to a grade 5 reading level, and designing custom solutions when a built-in one wasn’t available. In addition to pages, we also migrated forms, calendar events, and news items.
We also created a custom training program for staff, preparing them to take ownership of the site after our engagement.
The fun stuff
We configured the site to meet the City’s branding needs, adding custom CSS as needed. We embedded third-party tools, customizing their appearance to match brand guidelines. And we built this widget for the Library, providing a custom solution for their databases and services page.
