News and Updates

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has upgraded its ‘How’s My Waterway?’ website into a responsive design website, meaning it

Latinos appear to be adapting to mobile technology faster than other groups, according to Mobile Future. They are ahead of the average U.S. population in several key categories, such as: 47% of Latino adults have embraced wireless exclusively versus 34% of all U.S. adults

See how a shift in consumer behavior during the last few years lead to the responsive redesign of USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov.

In May, NASA released the Space Place Prime app for both iPhone and iPad. This app’s target audience is not only kids, but for teachers, parents, and all space enthusiasts. Based on NASA’s website, The Space Place, this app presents

Since the launch of Next.Data.gov, your help and ideas have made it possible to make two updates to the site. We’re naming these biweekly releases after the presidents so the one that launched this week is the Adams Release. We’re pleased to announce that much

Agencies discuss how to make social media programs more sharable and engaging.

The way people are using mobile is changing—we are socializing in new ways; performing tasks in new ways, often multi-tasking between activities; and sharing and gathering information in new ways.

Members of the military and their families now have access to Military OneSource on the go with the new Department of Defense mobile website Military OneSource. This

Guest post by Ellen Langhans, healthfinder.gov Program Manager in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Department of Health and Human Services, with contribution from Tim Hudak, Web Analytics Specialist in the Office of

According to research done by Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments grew 47 percent from 156.5 million units in the second quarter of 2012 to 229.6 million units in the second quarter of 2013. Additionally, the research finds that this growth is being driven by demand for Android phones

Security testing is used to ensure that a mobile product does not pose a threat to agency IT systems and databases. In addition, privacy testing ensures that an app does not put the user’s personally identifiable information into a compromisable position. This article was developed as part of the Mobile Application Development Program. See our

Performance testing is used to verify that an app or web page will display quickly to the user and will continue to function as the number of users increases to peak loads. Performance is an important consideration for mobile applications because the connection speed of users is often slower and more variable for mobile users than desktop users. Surveys

Thunderclap is the latest social media and crowd-sourcing platform available to federal agencies to better engage with the public, with a newly negotiated government-compatible Terms of Service (TOS) agreement. GSA collaborated with Thunderclap to negotiate the amended terms, which brings the total number of tools with federal-compatible agreements to 66.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has developed a responsive design website for the HUD Office of Inspector General. The website provides: news, the latest reports and publications, locations to

What’s one of the most important factors in delivering a good customer experience? When I first began learning about customer experience, one of the biggest surprises was the importance of culture. Organizational culture can be defined as the values and behavior that contribute to the unique and psychological environment of an organization.It’s based on shared

Accessibility testing is a subset of usability testing and is the inclusive practice of making websites and mobile applications usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. You do this by testing mobile websites and/or applications on all leading browsers, mobile devices and screen readers. This article was developed as part of the Mobile Application

The mobile product your agency is trying to promote needs to fit your customers, and creating mobile personas is a strategic way of doing that.

Plan and analyze. Write and design. Test and refine. As Web Manager for Usability.gov, I have found that taking a user-centered approach is vital each time you improve or build a digital product, especially when the content is about improving user

Like website development, API security revolves around three stages—planning the API, testing the API, and monitoring the API after it has launched. The planning stage requires those involved to conceptually map several design decisions and the impact that they will have on security. The second stage applies your agency’s security program to the API release

Wikipedia says that structured content refers to information that’s been broken down and classified using metadata. It can also refer to information that’s been classified using XML or other standard or proprietary forms of metadata. The National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) move to structured