Join the U.S. Web Design System team for a lesson on customizing and extending the design system.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
Design
Understand how and why design impacts user experience
Guidance, resources, and community to help you use design to create government websites that meet customer needs, work well on any device, and follow federal web requirements.
Related Policy
21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act
Design: essential knowledge
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An introduction to design
How to design government websites that meet customer needs, work well on any device, and follow federal web requirements.
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An introduction to design systems
If your organization needs to ensure compliance with a design standard or align to a brand, a design system can help you achieve those goals more easily than building a site from scratch. Learn how a design system can help you and what you need to know to get started.
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USWDS design principles
Earn trust by following consistent design principles.
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Understanding design in 10 questions
Learn how the discipline of design can help your agency improve customer experience.
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Bringing design in-house
What is design, who are designers, and how can they help your agency? Learn how to build a design team that can help your agency solve “wicked problems” and be more innovative.
Design events
Annual Gathering
Spring 2024 Community Summit
Digital service experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices on delivering a digital-first public experience.
2024
Learn about the USWDS component lifecycle, and how you can suggest a new component.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
This month the Design System team will talk about the development and rollout of their new accessibility tests for components.
Watch Video
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
Conducting user research with people with disabilities
USWDS Monthly Call - October 2023
This month, we’ll share progress and findings from our recent effort to improve our ongoing research practice.
Watch Video
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2023
Design news
How USAGov uses data to improve content
Each month, USAGov’s content designers spend many hours ensuring that the content on USA.gov and USAGov en Español is up-to-date, accurate, and meets user needs. Learn how their team does holistic reviews of each topic section based on a rolling calendar with the goal of updating all content at least every 6 months. — via USA.gov
Search.gov year in review: 2023 report
Learn what types of information people searched for on federal websites in 2023, see emerging trends the team is exploring to improve customers’ search experience in 2024, and check out three new updates. The data tab provides insightful summaries for 13 popular topic areas—and lists the public’s top 25 search terms, in their own words, for each. — via Search.gov
Maximizing impact of federal websites: Integrating metrics with annual goals and policies
The Open Data, Design, and Development (ODDD) team discusses how OMB’s recent memo, Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22), inspired them to reassess their metrics plan to harmonize with policies governing federal public websites. — via Office of Natural Resources Revenue
Customer experience and human-centered design
Customer experience is the application of design within a business context to craft the human experience.
Making GSA’s public art collection more accessible
GSA’s Fine Arts team recently leveraged modern product development practices to launch the new collection website.
Resources on Design
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An introduction to design
How to design government websites that meet customer needs, work well on any device, and follow federal web requirements.
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Making the big move: Search in support of federal web modernization
In this special report, we discuss a website redesign’s nine phases and their impact on search.
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An introduction to design systems
If your organization needs to ensure compliance with a design standard or align to a brand, a design system can help you achieve those goals more easily than building a site from scratch. Learn how a design system can help you and what you need to know to get started.
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Embedding Equity in Civic Design to Transform Customer Experience
This case study describes how two civic designers at different agencies embed equity in civic design to transform federal customer experience.
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Lessons from the 2021 Federal Plain Language Report Card
This event recap highlights best practices, a short case study video, and examples of federal web content that received both high and low scores in the 2021 Plain Language Report Card.
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Multilingual Huddle: Designing for Translation
In this webinar, Laura Godfrey and Fedora Braverman share tips for translating content in the digital context.
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Deceptive Design: How to Identify and Combat Consequence Design
Consequence design is part of everyday life. Deceptive techniques like “dark patterns” and “hostile design” trick people into taking unintended actions — learn how to prevent them from sneaking into our design work.
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Addressing Barriers to User-Centered Design
An overview of the most common barriers and how federal agencies might address them.
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The basics of human-centered design in government
How the Lab at OPM drives innovation through design education
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U.S. Web Design System
A design system for the federal government that makes it easier to build accessible, mobile-friendly government websites for the American public.
Tools and Services
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18F
We help government agencies fix technical problems, build products, and improve how government serves the public through technology.
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Presidential Innovation Fellows
We help government agencies fix technical problems, build products, and improve how government serves the public through technology.
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U.S. Digital Service
We deploy small, responsive groups of designers, engineers, product managers, and bureaucracy specialists to work with and empower civil servants.
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10x
Provides funding for new technology projects or products across government, from the TTS office of investments.
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DotGov Registry
We make it easy to register and manage a .gov domain for US-based government organizations.
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The Lab at OPM
A team of designers with diverse backgrounds that help agencies address complex challenges and build human-centered design capacity across the federal government.
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U.S. Web Design System
A toolkit of principles, guidance, and code that helps agency digital teams build accessible, mobile-friendly government websites for the American public.
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Directory of services, tools, and teams
Free and low-cost shared services and tools offered by the GSA and other agencies.
More News and Events on Design
260 posts
How USAGov uses data to improve content
Each month, USAGov’s content designers spend many hours ensuring that the content on USA.gov and USAGov en Español is up-to-date, accurate, and meets user needs. Learn how their team does holistic reviews of each topic section based on a rolling calendar with the goal of updating all content at least every 6 months. — via USA.gov
Join the U.S. Web Design System team for a lesson on customizing and extending the design system.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
Search.gov year in review: 2023 report
Learn what types of information people searched for on federal websites in 2023, see emerging trends the team is exploring to improve customers’ search experience in 2024, and check out three new updates. The data tab provides insightful summaries for 13 popular topic areas—and lists the public’s top 25 search terms, in their own words, for each. — via Search.gov
Annual Gathering
Spring 2024 Community Summit
Digital service experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices on delivering a digital-first public experience.
2024
Learn about the USWDS component lifecycle, and how you can suggest a new component.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
Maximizing impact of federal websites: Integrating metrics with annual goals and policies
The Open Data, Design, and Development (ODDD) team discusses how OMB’s recent memo, Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22), inspired them to reassess their metrics plan to harmonize with policies governing federal public websites. — via Office of Natural Resources Revenue
Customer experience and human-centered design
Customer experience is the application of design within a business context to craft the human experience.
This month the Design System team will talk about the development and rollout of their new accessibility tests for components.
Watch Video
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2024
Making GSA’s public art collection more accessible
GSA’s Fine Arts team recently leveraged modern product development practices to launch the new collection website.
Conducting user research with people with disabilities
USWDS Monthly Call - October 2023
This month, we’ll share progress and findings from our recent effort to improve our ongoing research practice.
Watch Video
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2023
Why the American People Deserve a Digital Government
OMB released new policy guidance for government that includes a variety of actions and standards to help federal agencies design, develop, and deliver modern websites and digital services. Memo M-23-22, Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience, will make it seamless for the public to obtain government information and services online, and help agencies fully implement the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (21st Century IDEA). — via The White House
A website refresh in 3 months
A website redesign doesn’t have to be a big project. By approaching it as a process of iteration, we launched a refreshed site in the span of several weeks. — via 18F
Making the case for sentence case on USAGov’s websites
What is the best case style to use for titles and headings? For the new USAGov websites, we discuss the decision to use sentence case on USAGov products. — via USA.gov
Get to know Search.gov
Search.gov’s goal is to deliver a high-quality, government-wide search engine that allows agencies to customize search experiences for the public, regardless of website type or organization. Learn about standard offerings, as well as three major enhancements. — via USA.gov
Reflections on a year in government from 11 U.S. Digital Corps fellows
To celebrate their first year in government, 11 U.S. Digital Corps Fellows reflect on what they have learned.
How a Small Team Modernized a Federal Website to Improve CX
The recent redesign of the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) website stands as an example for agencies seeking to enhance their online platforms. ONRR’s Open Data, Design, and Development (ODDD) team played a pivotal role in this website transformation by embracing open data, user-centered design, accessibility, collaboration, and continuous improvement. — via Performance.gov
Annual Summit
2023 Government UX Summit
User experience (UX) experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices during this virtual summit.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the User Experience Community of Practice
2023
Making the big move - Special report: Search in support of federal web modernization
For the past several years Search.gov has reported each year on the top public needs based on the search terms they used.
This special report will take a different approach. It still offers a high level view of the public experience of seeking services and information from the government. But it also tells the story of change, and how these changes affect search and findability.
— via Search.gov
User Experience
Incorporating user experience practices into data-driven development of a biomedical software tool
Join the National Cancer Institute and a university-based researcher to discuss interpreting complex data.
Hosted by Digital.gov and the User Experience Community of Practice
2023
Judiciary Launches New Federal Ticket Processing Website
Individuals can now pay tickets for minor federal violations more easily, using a redesigned website for the Judiciary’s Central Violations Bureau. The website, officially launched in early May, leverages new technologies and best design practices to improve usability and accessibility across devices, including smart phones. — via Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
