Health & Human Services Research, Brand & Website Redesign

United States Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Services

  • Role

    Lead UI Designer

  • Team

    Project Managers
    Product Owners
    Lead UX Researcher
    Additional UI Designer
    2-3 Rotating Engineers
    Business Owner

  • Timeline

    6-12 months
    (Oct 2020 - Nov 2021)

  • Tools

    Sketch
    Adobe XD
    Miro
    Jira & Confluence
    Microsoft Teams

  • Skills

    Strategic Design
    Brand & Marketing Design
    Wireframing & Prototyping
    Development Handoff & QA
    Stakeholder Interaction & Management
    Design Systems
    UX Workshops

  • Key Results

    Updated website to United States Web Design System (USWDS)

    Identified key needs during the pandemic and executed on updates and resources made available to the public

  • Background

    United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive brand department of the U.S. federal Government dedicated to protecting the health of U.S. people and providing essential human services.

  • The Challenge

    HHS, being the over-arching department of subsidiaries of smaller agencies (like CDC & FDA), lacked the marketing and brand stance in the public’s eye as a leader of these other agencies. Brand voice & identity lacked but became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was our job in order to rebrand and refocus their agency in the fore-front, being the north star of all health sub-agencies.

  • Understanding the Problem

    Our team proposed solutions through strategic, brainstorm branding workshops, research, user testing with health professionals, and redesign of the design system and website using the United States Web Design System (USWDS).

  • End Result

    The result was a complete update of the website using an atomic design approach to use a design system to globalize design elements while minimizing technical debt. The site is now using best practice standards such as accessibility requirements, contrast compliance, 21st Century IDEA properties, United States Web Design System elements and mobile-first design structure.

User Personas & Flows

Through surveys and user interviews with key users amongst the healthcare system, I was able to identify specific personas that use the Human Health and Services (HHS) website in their daily use. Each having their own needs for what information was available on the site. From there I was able to build out those journeys into user flows to help improve and build on the current UX structure of the website.

  • User Persona & Flow

  • Multiple User Flows

Building the Design System

Alongside the research, I spearheaded the building and implementation of the design system. Having worked directly with the United States Web Design System (USWDS), I had a wide knowledge and experience base in properly leveraging the system and building it out alongside my talented development team in Drupal.

Key Highlights:
✅ Website Audit
✅ Identifying which components could be transferred
✅ Implementing tokens as the base (for color and typography)
✅ Updating components promptly to follow the guidelines for web standards & accessibility.