USDA Website Redesign

Design Challenge Project

Project Summary:

Information accessibility on the USDA website was problematic.

Users struggled to retrieve information that they were searching for because of the layout and organization of content and navigation. Our team carefully redesigned the site to create an improved user experience.

Identifying the problem

Initial Testing Findings

The user success rate of the initial testing was unsatisfactory, signaling a need to rethink the overall user experience of the site.

Proto Persona

Information architecture was reconsidered based on the priorities of the user and their typical tasks on the site

The goal was to make it as simple and efficient as possible for the user to access the information they are looking for
We used the context of COVID-19 to come up with a restaurant manager who needs to access the latest information on food safety in relation to Coronavirus.
After examining the pages our proto persona user would need to access, we reorganized the information to be more readily available and simple to understand.
Users being able to easily find answers to their questions was our priority

Addressing Key Pain Points

Information Architecture

We resolved user pain points due to information overwhelm and failure to locate information by making the layout more scannable, plus making the information more accessible by:

Renaming Certain Categories,
Reorganizing the Site Map,
‘Chunking’ Information into Cards with Scrollability

Desktop Design

We created three iterations of the desktop site: low-fi, mid-fi, and high-fi. Our final high-fi design was used to create the prototype. All iterations were made in Figma.

Mobile Design

Like with the desktop version, we created low-fi, mid-fi, and high-fi iterations of the mobile site design in Figma. The high-fi design was used to create the prototype.