A friendly front door to a serious system.
This case study delves into the design process of a government project aimed at creating a user-friendly portal for individuals to sign up, complete their profiles, and apply for various opportunities based on specific criteria.
The project prioritizes a mobile-first approach, catering to a younger demographic, and adheres to 508 compliance and ADA standards.
Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling.
Most government portals technically pass accessibility audits and still feel like a maze. We treated 508 / ADA as the starting line.
- → One thought per screen — never two forms competing for attention
- → Plain language, second-person voice, no acronyms without a tooltip
- → Progress that's honest — fewer steps that feel finished beats more steps that feel "almost"
- → Designed for the worst case: small screen, slow connection, screen reader, no keyboard mouse
A small, durable component set.
The system pared down to a handful of robust components: a single input pattern, a one-question screen, a status block, and a results card. Everything else is a recombination of these. That made accessibility audits much shorter and the build much faster.
A first-try-friendly front door.
In moderated usability testing, first-time users completed signup without assistance and could find at least one matching opportunity within the session. Screen-reader users flagged zero blockers in the second round.
Outstanding: localization, offline-ish states, and the long tail of opportunity types still to be designed for.