Goal

• Dismantle bureaucratic complexity and reconstruct information architecture with user-first philosophy

Problems to Solve

• Former construction of the site was reliant solely on internal table of organization without context for public users
• Internal attachment to office and division construction fogged content owners' ability to sympathize with new users
• Cross-pollination of relevant content needed to occur between major audience segments without unnecessary duplication or conflicting journeys
• Established website users and business partners shared feedback in feeling frustrated by UX built predominantly for new users

Navigating Challenges

• Card sorting activities throughout migration to determine best groupings and placement of information, not bound to office construction
• Individualized meetings with each office were held to explain overall mission and rationale behind new information architecture.

Delivered Solutions

• A user-focused primary navigation construction completely detached from organization's internal-facing table of organization.
  • About Us: Boilerplate information, news, events
  • Traveling: Agency products centered on those traveling by car, truck, bus, foot, bike, or plane in Ohio
  • Projects: Information specifically on contracted construction projects and associated traffic or property impacts
  • Programs: Evergreen initiatives supporting core functions
  • Doing Business: Contracting, consulting, and standards for design and construction

Results

• After two years of establishment and further UX refinements, Projects and Doing Business gateways proved to be incredibly effective funnels of information, boasting few than 10% and 5% exit rates respectively
• Programs was deemed an ineffective gateway and was earmarked for removal due to persistent underperformance in user retention and engagement
• About Us, while not a significant traffic collect, performed well with the audiences it did capture in retention and engagement

Goal

• Curate information from offices around the state to create a unified home for information on the agency’s snow and ice operations

Problems to Solve

• There was no centralized home to promote snow and ice as the agency’s premier service due to district offices’ authority on the topic
• Topic performed poorly in SEO and importance due to all of the agency’s 12 regional offices standing up their own (sometimes conflicting) “FAQ” pages on the topic
• While the most visible, the agency was not the sole authority on snow and ice operations and had to route users efficiently and easily to another government entity if needed

Navigating Challenges

• After surveying information and compiling a wireframe, meetings were held with each of the district offices to determine accuracy and “lowest common denominators” of snow and ice operations
• Collaborated with video and PR teams to incorporate a public safety campaign raising awareness to motorists striking plow trucks with their vehicles

Delivered Solutions

• A fully revitalized website to share winter operations for the transportation department that encompasses best practices and information from around the state

Results

• Site became a top-five performer across the site each winter season
• Traffic was funneled to the site through use of real-time data analysis and banner alerts during Christmas Eve winter storm in 2023, leading to tens of thousands of hits throughout the day

Goal

• Define success for UX patterns and content on a government website

Problems to Solve

• Internal understanding of quantitative research was limited to total page views, isolated from any other behaviors or traffic metrics
• Traditional conversions did not exist due to nature of government services
• Qualitative research methods were not effective due to low profile nature of attempts to conduct

Navigating Challenges

• Educated leadership on traditional UX methodologies and gained trust to institute sustainable plan
• Compiled baseline report of annual website analytics to identify pinch points, including pages with high exit and bounce rates, underperforming and zero-result pages, and referral sources

Delivered Solutions

• The Google HEART framework was chosen and championed as the preferred methodology for success
• Each redesign or rewrite effort was assigned a HEART goal, typically concerned with engagement and task success
• Quarterly reports measure effectiveness of major website initiatives, such as adoption rate of HTML-translated content and key landing page engagement rates

Results

• Leveraged proven adoption of HTML-translated content to continue practice across all areas of the agency thanks to promising HEART performance measures
  • HTML versions of documents have been proven to be adopted over equivalent PDF versions at roughly a 4:1 ratio across the site
• Cut exit rates on three of five primary landing pages in half through thoughtful redesigns that prioritized personalized and curated experiences after dissatisfactory HEART performance measures.

Goal

• Communicate relevant construction projects within all 88 counties of Ohio in one subsite area.

Problems to Solve

• Real-time data was housed on an internal project management system and documented in engineering terminology
• Projects were too plentiful to create a page for each one manually
• Precedent for this level of project communication did not exist within the agency
• Back-end development was contracted to a external company with little institutional knowledge

Navigating Challenges

• Collaborated with internal stakeholders to determine sustainable solutions for product and integrations
• Acted as the liaison between internal stakeholders and contracted developers to accomplish necessary functionality
• Engaged in additional development contracts to refine and enhance features after initial launch

Delivered Solutions

• A semiautonomous project sync system, in which project information was exported from the internal information source, generalized using scripting logic, and fed into CMS page templates by way of a daily synchronization job
• Project pages adhered to standardized template for the first time in agency history
• Personalization items were added for the user to filter projects by route, municipality, county, official public commenting status, construction status, Project ID (PID) number, and more

Results

• Hundreds of project pages are published and autonomously maintained each construction season
• Internal adoption strong enough to merit further integrations with other agency systems, including YouTube, Formstack, and live map-based traffic conditions application
• Solution presented as case study at agency’s annual Tech Conference for using technology to better connect the agency with the public

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