Making civic participation in local government easier.

Challenge

State board members have the opportunity to influence policy decisions that affect them and their communities, so serving on a board is an easy way for ordinary Utah residents to be heard. But poor website design and a confusing application process prevent many from applying to open board positions. Staff who manage boards also get stuck during the approval process, wasting time and leaving positions unfilled for months.

Approach

My team's goal was to make the process of becoming a board member easier on both applicants and agency staff to reduce bureaucratic inefficiency and enable a more representative public to serve in Utah's government. Through a cycle of research and iterative human-centered design, I led the redesign of the Boards and Commissions website and application process.

Impact

The fully redesigned website and application process resulted in a 98% increase in applicant satisfaction and is now used by 35 state agencies and hundreds of Utah residents. The Boards and Commissions Director also observed a decrease in agency staff seeking support with the process and higher quality data from improved management capabilities.

Team

UX/UI Designer
Marina DeFrates

Product Manager
Srinidhi Ramakrishna

UX Researcher
Heewon Kwon

Developer
Miguel Diaz

Context

State government

Timeline

10 weeks
(Summer 2022)

Status

🚀 Shipped

Process

1/ Sizing up the current state of Boards and Commissions

Testing out the process

I started by attempting to navigate the complicated process of becoming a board member from start to finish, which allowed me to map the ins and outs of the application process so my team could start to identify where things might be going wrong.

Taking a look at the current website experience

I also took a look at the current Boards and Commissions website. Data from Hotjar and Google Analytics immediately revealed some glaring usability issues:

⚠️️
Users move haphazardly over the homepage with no focus.

⚠️️
Users scroll endlessly without reading important information embedded in long paragraphs.

⚠️️
Users leave a page quickly when they can’t find the information they need.

2/ Leading with research

Research goals

To dig deeper into the challenges our users faced, we conducted 20+ interviews with applicants and agency staff.

🎯

Identify barriers to that prevent potential applicants from applying to boards and commissions positions.

🎯

Discover challenges agency staff face in managing their boards and commissions.

Research notes

Key findings

🔍
Applicants often do not know what boards and commissions are or how they work.

👴🏽
“I think they don’t realize that they don’t get a lot of applications because people don’t know what’s going on [with Boards and Commissions].”

-Applicant

🔍
Applicants struggle to find relevant boards or open positions they qualify for.

🤦🏽‍♀️
"This requires you to search every single listing, and that really hurts my soul."

-Applicant

🔍
Applicants get tangled up in a confusing application process.

🙋🏼
“I know me and some of my peers needed a guide to get where we needed to go.”

-Applicant

🔍
Agency staff get frustrated that they can't change incorrect data.

🤦🏻‍♂️
"One of the biggest hurdles for our department will be getting good data again."

-Dept. of Financial Institutions

🔍
Agency staff struggle to find new applications to approve and often miss them as a result.

🤷🏾‍♀️
"We couldn't meet for two months because I didn't have any board members."

-Community Impact Board

🔍
Agency staff often need assistance to complete the approval process.

👩🏼‍🦳
"I usually have to message someone in Boards and Commissions to remind me what to do."

-Animal Industry Division

3/ Identifying design opportunities

Drawing on our research, I noted pain points (red sticky notes) and the frequency (dots) with which both potential applicants and agency staff experienced them. Design opportunities are noted in green.

Prioritization

Since we had limited time (~7 weeks) for the redesign, I came up with a focused list of goals for our user groups and prioritized features based on the severity and frequency of issues that, if fixed, would result in the greatest improvement with the least time and effort. These included a redesigned homepage, expanded search capabilities for applicants, and streamlining the approval process for agency staff.

Design goals + features

🎯
Introduce boards and commissions in a friendly and informative way.

Redesign the homepage and create plain language content throughout the website.

🎯
Make the search for open positions more intuitive and customizable.

Allow applicants to search by interest area, board and/or specific position via search bar or filter.

🎯
Empower applicants to complete the application on their own.

Set applicants’ expectations up front and provide guidance with helper text along the way.

🎯
Give agency staff more control over managing their board data.

Modify editing permissions to grant agency staff the appropriate controls.

🎯
Make urgent and priority tasks more visible to agency staff.

Redesign layout of approval section to emphasize pending applications.

🎯
Empower agency staff to complete the approval process on their own.

Design a centralized hub that provides necessary guidance and information.

Searching for inspiration

I did some research into other states' boards and commissions websites and took notes on what seemed to be working well. For example, Arizona communicated their process well and Minnesota had advanced search features for applicants trying to find relevant boards.

Prototyping

I iterated through ideas to incorporate the prioritized features into the website and application interface by sketching layouts, creating wireframes and constructing a low-fidelity prototype in Figma. (Homepage sketches and wireframes below, in which I was testing out ways to introduce boards and commissions to audiences with different levels of familiarity.)

4/ Gathering feedback

By conducting 10+ surveys and moderated usability tests with the low-fidelity prototype, I quickly gathered feedback on the preliminary redesign. Based on the feedback, I updated the interface and adjusted aspects of the website and process users were still confused about, like the FAQ section.

Applicants

Before redesign

After redesign

Agency staff

Before redesign

After redesign

💁🏻‍♀️

“This would allow a lot more people to become civically engaged, and who doesn’t need more of that right now?”

-Applicant

Designs

Updating a familiar look

I refreshed some of the basic website assets, taking cues from the Utah state design system. Previously, there was no accent color, so I added one to be able to draw visual emphasis to buttons, links, calls to action, etc.

For applicants

A welcoming homepage

I decided on the homepage design that most participants preferred due to its simplicity and clear calls to action.

A customizable position search

Inspired by other boards and commissions websites, I allowed users to sort by interest area when searching for an open position, so that they could more easily find boards and positions that were relevant to them.

A snag-free application process

The previous application flow was loaded with unfamiliar language and many confusing micro-interactions, which I cleaned up in the redesign.

A focus on accessibility

During our interviews with agency staff, we heard that many applicants they worked with did not have formal resumes, especially those who worked in agriculture or trade jobs. This effectively prevented them from applying to a position, since a resume is a required part of the application. To ensure that everyone could apply without the additional burden of creating a resume, I designed an option that would allow an applicant to type in basic information about their work experience from which a resume would be created and submitted for them.

For agency staff

A centralized portal

Agency staff often had trouble finding where to approve applications or manage board data, so I designed a centralized place from which they can easily initiate these top tasks.

A streamlined approval process

One of the biggest problems agency staff faced was missing new applications to approve, so I designed a dashboard that put new applications front and center, along with options to sort a larger list of applications.

An expanded set of permissions

Agency staff had trouble managing their boards because they couldn't alter a lot of their data due to permissions in the Salesforce system, so I consulted with our developer to change those, along with a interface that allows agency staff to edit current and historical data within the page of each board and position.

Implementation

Because our team had to leave before the redesign was implemented, we prepared detailed documentation so that our developer could continue working on it in our absence. They were able to ship the MVP in January 2023.

Reflection

What I learned

Working within constraints

I had to design creatively within the given Salesforce platform, timelines and bureaucratic constraints of a government context.

Balancing stakeholder needs

Not every feature that stakeholders wanted was feasible, so I had to prioritize those that would result in the greatest improvement for our wide variety of users and take into account our developer's capacity.

Collaboration is key

Clear communication, organization, and flexibility are essential when working with a small distributed team that is only working together for a short time.

The power of a unified vision

As the only designer on the team, I realized how many tools I have at my disposal to demonstrate to people without design knowledge what is possible.

Moving forward

Analyzing improvement

We have heard anecdotally that the redesign has been working much better for applicants and agency staff, but I would also love to take a look at any data that has been collected on application rates, diverse representation across boards, and time spent managing boards since the website redesign to determine how effective the redesign has been in helping to achieve the originally stated goals.

Implementing additional features

There were de-prioritized features that I nonetheless think would make the boards and commissions experience much richer in the future, including:

a “featured” section on the homepage to showcase boards and commissions activities
a “nominations” feature for community members to nominate others for open positions
multimedia content
language translation options
a mobile-friendly website and application process
regular training agency staff to learn how to use the redesigned website