Design

Walter Reed’s 3-D Printing Innovations Help Warfighters Get Back to Life

This is part of an ongoing series highlighting the innovations and research happening at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Wounded warriors who dream of returning to playing hockey, climbing mountains or simply brushing their teeth with ease can look to 3-D printing innovations at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to

Yolanda R. Arrington

Aug 29, 2017

The Data Briefing: Federal Government Pioneers in Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Training

When I was in the private sector, around the year 2000, I worked for an information technology (IT) consulting company as a project manager and developer. On one project, I provided support for early mobile devices given to medical students. I worked in a small office around the corner from the cardio-respiratory simulator (CRS). The

Bill Brantley

Aug 09, 2017

Have You Critiqued Your Critique Process?

DEMO Whenever I hear someone complain about the process of a design critique, I’m always a bit surprised. Blame it on the fact

Meghan Lazier

Jul 31, 2017

Vets.gov: A Modern Software Development Environment in Government

When people think of government software, they often think of COBOL and PowerBuilder 5, with manual software deploys every three to six months on a fixed number of machines in a government-run data center. This perception is sometimes justified, but sometimes entirely wrong. Regardless, the perception makes many developers reluctant to work for the government

Alex Yale-Loehr

Raquel Romano

Jul 03, 2017

VA Innovators Network Program: Ahead of the Curve in Healthcare Innovation

VA Innovators Network Program Selected as FedHealth IT Innovation Award Winner This month, FedHealth IT announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Innovators Network Program was selected as a 2017 recipient of the FedHealthIT Innovation Award. FedHealth IT recognized 25 Federal Health

VA Center for Innovation

Jun 30, 2017

Improving Customer Experience with Digital Personas

Keeping the customer’s needs front and center is important when developing new digital tools. We recently developed a set of user personas as part of our work to establish a more robust—and data informed—understanding of the individuals that engage digitally with the National Archives (NARA). User personas are fictional, but realistic representations of key audience

Archivist of the United States

Jun 20, 2017

Fractal and Federalist Join the U.S. Web Design Standards

We’ve recently added two powerful tools to the U.S. Web Design Standards development workflow that allow us to preview, test, and publish the Standards code more quickly and easily. Fractal Fractal is a powerful and flexible framework for building interactive component libraries. It’s similar to Jekyll (which we use to publish the Standards site) in

Shawn Allen

Jun 13, 2017

The New FEC.gov

Last week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unveiled their new website at FEC.gov. This new site is the result of a years-long collaboration with GSA’s 18F and features completely revamped tools for exploring campaign finance data. It provides user-centered content for understanding the reporting and compliance requirements for people participating in federal elections, redesigned tools

Noah Manger

Jennifer Thibault

Jun 06, 2017

Federalist Is out of Beta and Open for Business

If you’re a program manager or a federal web developer you’ve probably been given a seemingly simple task: Create a basic website as part of a new initiative at your agency. The hardest part is often not crafting the content or designing the prototype, but getting the security and privacy compliance in order to launch

Will Slack

Jonathan Hooper

Jun 05, 2017

Benefits of Accessible Design

According to the World Bank, approximately one billion people worldwide live with a disability, making up the world’s largest minority. Designing from an accessibility-first standpoint has the potential to benefit all stakeholders, not just people with disabilities, because accessible design typically delivers a better user experience. Currently many websites and digital platforms are inaccessible, which makes them difficult

Phillip Crawford

May 09, 2017

GetMyFuture.org: Essential Youth Resources, Now

They say that life can be summed up as the process of a series of doors closing. By that, they mean that opportunities for taking different paths start to disappear as you move through life. It’s a logical sentiment, but there’s an obverse to it. When you’re young, all those doors are open. Doors as far as you can see. It’s all about learning how to make informed decisions about what doors to wander through.

Gay Gilbert

May 02, 2017

A Deeper Look into the USDA.gov Website Redesign

We hope you are finding it easier to get the information you need on USDA.gov following the launch of our site redesign in March. We’ve already welcomed over 1 million visitors to the new site and we are pleased with the positive feedback we’ve received thus far. Our redesign makes it easier for you to

Bernetta Reese

Apr 26, 2017

Congress.gov 2017 Spring Cleaning: Download Search Results and Advanced Search Enhancements

Spring is a beautiful time of year in Washington, D.C. The temperature warms up; the cherry blossoms are out; and we frequently have an update of Congress.gov to share. In 2015 we added treaties and web-friendly bill text, and in 2016 we expanded the quick search feature. Today there is another round of enhancements to the Library of Congress website for

Andrew Weber

Apr 25, 2017

How the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Uses the U.S. Web Design Standards

In this second post in our series, we met with the team at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and learned how they used the Standards to train, develop, and design their various websites and applications.

Julia Solórzano

Apr 12, 2017

Color in Digital Design

How do we choose color in digital design? In print, we have the Pantone fan and what you see is what you get — as long as your printer is color calibrated. With computer monitors, one does not get such precision, even within one office. So how much time and effort do you spend on color selection?

Angela Y. Smithers

Apr 04, 2017

Engineering the Chaski Relay: A Touchscreen Game at the National Museum of the American Indian

The interactive team at the National Museum of the American Indian saw the chaski story as as a candidate for interactivity and gamification, and an opportunity to bring additional engagement to the museum gallery. With a more focused idea and funding from the Electronic Software Association, the team set out on prototyping and development.

Benjamin Bloom

Mar 31, 2017

A Complete Redesign with You in Mind

We’re excited to launch a complete redesign of USDA.gov featuring stronger visual storytelling components, a more modern user-experience with easy to find services and resources, and to top it off, a completely mobile-friendly design. Through careful planning, thoughtful design, and a primary focus on user experience and usability, we’ve taken the best of government and industry

Peter Rhee

Mar 29, 2017

NASA’s Journey With the U.S. Web Design Standards

The U.S. Web Design Standards were created by the government, for the government. They’re currently implemented on hundreds of government sites, with an audience of more than 26 million monthly users.

Julia Solórzano

Mar 24, 2017

New ITIF Report Inspires a Closer Look at Website Performance and Security—Here Is Where to Begin

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) recently published a report, Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites, that looks at the performance, security, and accessibility of the top 297 government websites.

Digital.gov Team

Mar 24, 2017

Mythbuster’s Guide to Accessibility: What We’ve Learned About 508 Compliance That All Technologists Can Use

Too often, we’ve seen others neglect accessibility because of some common misconceptions that make things difficult. In this post, we’ll debunk these myths, so you can easily create universally accessible content.

Nick Heiner

Mar 22, 2017

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