Most resident’s visit the City of San Jose’s website to complete essential tasks: pay their taxes, get an online permit or find their garbage schedule. And our user-testing confirmed that most users can’t complete common tasks (with a failure rate of 75%). After co-developing the City’s first (alpha) usability standards, conducting multiple stakeholder workshops, we implemented content design and usability improvements in the newly launched City website. Subsequent user-testing confirmed users are now able to successfully complete many of these popular tasks on the City’s website (with a new failure rate of 0 to 25%).
Analytics, multiple rounds of label-testing, and interviews with stakeholders informed the City’s new user-centered business navigation tab. Actionable labels and task-oriented content, helps residents find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.
Despite being highly visible on the homepage (especially on mobile), users found the City’s Service Finder tool challenging to navigate. Label testing helped identify better UI and content improvements. With clearer and actionable labels, user-testing showed that residents better understood how to use the tool.