{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
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    "title" : "Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards Better Through Your Feedback |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards Better Through Your Feedback",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2016/03/16/making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards Better Through Your Feedback","summary" : "Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.","date" : "2016-03-16T13:02:08-04:00","date_modified" : "2024-04-02T09:45:13-04:00","authors" : {"carolyn-dew" : "Carolyn Dew","melody-kramer" : "Melody Kramer"},"topics" : {
        
            "content-strategy" : "Content Strategy",
            "design" : "Design",
            "human-centered-design" : "Human centered design",
            "user-experience" : "User Experience"
            },"branch" : "cm-topics-button-component",
      "filename" :"2016-03-16-making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2016/03/2016-03-16-making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2016/03/2016-03-16-making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2016/03/2016-03-16-making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback.md","slug" : "making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2016/03/16/making-the-draft-u-s-web-design-standards-better-through-your-feedback/","content" :"\u003cp\u003eSince \u003ca href=\"https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/28/web-design-standards/\"\u003eour launch\u003c/a\u003e of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues\"\u003eGitHub issues\u003c/a\u003e and via email. We’ve received dozens of \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22feature+request%22\"\u003efeature requests\u003c/a\u003e as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/09/600-x-315-US-Web-Design-Standards-desktop-tablet-and-phone-home.jpg\"\n    alt=\"The U.S. Web Design Standards are designed to be viewed on any device.\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eOver the past five months, we’ve incorporated suggestions from the feedback we’ve received, resolved a number of outstanding issues, and made \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.8.3\"\u003evarious updates\u003c/a\u003e to our content and structure. We’ve also thought about topics like accessibility, content strategy, and user-centered design — particularly as it relates to users of government websites.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch of our work has come out of the \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.8.3\"\u003euser research\u003c/a\u003e conducted by our team and our colleagues on the Federal Front Door Team, who set out to better understand how the general public feels about and interacts with the federal government, so that we can design and build products that improve people’s experience across government agencies. Among their findings:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeople aren’t always able to differentiate between a government website and a website from the private sector. They use clues like domain names, official government logos, and trust-building language such as “this is an official government website” to evaluate the trustworthiness of a website.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeople sometimes have trouble with choice overload: when government websites give them too many choices or don’t explain the consequences of a certain choice.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe general public wants to be able to “see” the process when interacting with federal agencies and programs. This includes knowing when their information has been received and reviewed, and overall clarity into why the process takes as long as it does.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot all of these issues can be addressed with \u003ca href=\"https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/\"\u003ecommon UI elements\u003c/a\u003e from the Draft Standards, but they can be a start. Implementing consistent design patterns, such as colors and button styles, make it visually obvious that users are on a government website. And when interactions and forms start to look and feel the same, it lowers the mental energy required to complete them, especially when they are across multiple sites and agencies. In this way design patterns can simplify and clarify the consequences of making important choices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor federal employees, standards and guidance on creating forms, communicating application status, and explaining processes can improve the quality of government services, while freeing up staff time to spend on more-expensive channels like call centers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"the-draft-standards-in-action\"\u003eThe Draft Standards in action\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re excited to see government web administrators begin to use the Draft Standards on their sites. From \u003ca href=\"https://www.vets.gov/\"\u003evets.gov\u003c/a\u003e to \u003ca href=\"https://www.usa.gov/\"\u003eusa.gov\u003c/a\u003e, we’ve seen over a dozen examples of websites using components from the Draft Standards on their sites.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the coming days, we’ll be answering some frequently asked questions about the Draft Standards and detailing what we’ve learned and where we hope to go next.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs always, if you have additional questions or are thinking about similar topics, open \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues\"\u003ean issue on GitHub\u003c/a\u003e or email us directly at \u003ca href=\"mailto:uswebdesignstandards@gsa.gov\"\u003euswebdesignstandards@gsa.gov\u003c/a\u003e. You can also contribute code and content to the project \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards\"\u003eon GitHub\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis week, we released \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.9.0\"\u003ean update\u003c/a\u003e to the Draft Standards website and upgraded the Draft Standards themselves. This version introduces several backwards-incompatibility changes that will affect usage of the Draft Standards. You can read \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.9.0\"\u003ethe release notes\u003c/a\u003e. Also, we now have a standardized way to keep up to date with our standards through \u003ca href=\"https://www.npmjs.com/package/uswds\"\u003ethe npm package\u003c/a\u003e for the Draft Standards.\u003c/em\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThis post was originally published on the \u003ca href=\"https://18f.gsa.gov/blog/\"\u003e18F blog\u003c/a\u003e by Carolyn Dew and Melody Kramer, 18F staff members.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}