In August 2015, the City of Boston set out to reimagine the city's digital front door — Boston.gov — with the goal of building a government website that is beautiful, welcoming, and highly useful.
It had been over a decade since the last redesign, so the website lacked many standard modern features (e.g. mobile responsiveness). Inspired by these shortcomings, the Digital Team at the City of Boston prioritized building a website that was not only designed around the needs of users today but one that could adapt to users' changing needs in the future. Just as Facebook's and Amazon's websites are never "done," so too would Boston.gov be ever-improving.
The team spoke to members of the Boston community from all walks of life. From those conversations, they developed four central design principles: act as a helpful human, be equal parts warm and official, help users navigate a complex system, and build an energizing environment. These principles guided the team through the redesign and beyond as they continue to build on and improve the website over time.
Paying a parking ticket, planning a move, starting a business. Each day, there are countless situations that citizens face that are daunting without the proper tools and resources. The City of Boston set out to create a website that would be both welcoming and easy for citizens to use when tackling day-to-day issues. And beyond making basic information and services accessible, the goal was to build a website that humanizes interactions with government, inspiring members of the community to think differently about government and become more civically engaged.
To make this possible, the redesign process was rooted in citizen involvement from day one. The team spoke with city employees and residents who have used the website to understand challenges they faced. One interviewee summed it up: "Government isn't broken, but it sure feels that way." The team learned that City Hall employees often struggled to communicate key messages on the site, while citizens also found it difficult to locate and understand that same information.
To solve that problem, the team overhauled the structure of the website, putting themselves in citizens' shoes. How do residents think about an issue? What words do they use? Where do they expect to find answers? Through interviews, focus groups, and surveys, they tore up the old way of organizing content — by department, a hallmark of many government websites — in exchange for "guides." Guides are curated collections of resources. Using these guides, citizens can easily access information on complex issues like "Moving" or "Buying a Home".
In addition to changing the way content is organized on the website, they dramatically changed the content itself. They re-wrote thousands of webpages – more than one million words – using plain language and a human tone to make the website easier to understand and navigate. Now, the content is authored, maintained, and updated by content contributors across 60 city departments.
The most visible change was the new brand and visual identity, which was made publicly available for others to learn about and build on. Less visible, but arguably most important was the update to the website's backend. The team built the website on Drupal, an open source content management system which allows the City to utilize a large ecosystem of developers to adapt the website to users' changing needs. Boston.gov is also hosted in the cloud to provide a more secure and reliable experience.
In the spirit of involving users in the redesign, the City didn't do this work behind closed doors. With the help of partners at Acquia and IDEO, they launched a pilot website in January 2016 to begin testing designs and ideas with the public. The team adapted the site based on feedback from users (including the blind, those who had never used a computer, and users who speak very little English), and added new content and features every couple weeks until formally launching the new Boston.gov in July 2016.
The result of the redesign project is a website that has dramatically improved the accessibility of information and services the city offers, and a marked shift in residents' expectations of government. The website is mobile responsive, has a 9-10th grade reading level (down from a post-graduate level), and meets all AA WCAG guidelines for accessibility.
The new website also redefines what constituent engagement can and should look like. When the City launched the website, they also launched a roadmap for Boston.gov to share the work ahead and inspire the public to contribute their own ideas. Since launch, the team has seen an outpouring of feedback. Much of it has been strictly positive, but what was most striking was the amount of constructive feedback they've received. Of the 611 emails they received, 537 (88%) were actionable ideas for ways to improve the site.
Launching a redesigned Boston.gov marked a huge improvement in the City's digital presence, but what makes the website really unique is the team's commitment to making it even better over time. They used the time with their partners on the redesign, Acquia and IDEO, to absorb best practices, related to everything from user testing to working in agile sprints. The result is a team that is well equipped to adapt and improve the website in the years ahead. Since launch, the City has implemented 175 of the ideas sent to them, and will address the rest over the coming months.
