News and Updates

Trends on Tuesday: What Does Mobile-First Video Look Like?

Like many Americans during the last month, I developed FIFA fever. Checking on scores, anticipating the latest Google Doodle and watching game highlights became part of my daily iPhone routine. Despite the elimination of Team U.S.A, mobile video consumption continues to win new fans. Consider these mobile video viewing statistics: On average, consumers spend 33 minutes

Treci Johnson

Jul 08, 2014

User Experience (UX) vs. Customer Experience (CX): What’s the Dif?

“User Experience” and “Customer Experience.” They sound pretty similar, right? Well, here at the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, we look at it like this: User Experience (UX) deals with people interacting with your product and the experience they receive from that interaction. UX is measured with metrics like: success rate, error rate,

Tim Lowden

Jul 07, 2014

Have a H(app)y Fourth of July from MobileGov

Washington. You can say a lot of things about this town, but one thing is clear: Fourth of July is our holiday. No one rocks Independence Day quite like we do, thanks to the hardworking people at the National Park Service who manage our National Mall and help stage a blockbuster fireworks celebration.

Jul 03, 2014

Using Top Tasks to be Top-Notch: Federal Reserve Board Usability Case Study

In 2012, the Federal Reserve Board used the Top-task methodology to redesign our intranet, called Inside the Board, which had not been significantly updated since it was launched in 1995. After determining the top tasks the audience needs to accomplish on a website, you can run usability tests to gain knowledge and improve the site. The project

Ben Rosset

Jul 02, 2014

The API Briefing: APIs Come In Many (Data) Flavors

This week, we will look at three different APIs that demonstrate how agencies use different technologies to serve out data. Presenting data in various formats encourages developers to build on federal APIs. As past columns have shown, the innovative apps created with federal data are quickly growing. The latest API news this week is how

Bill Brantley

Jul 02, 2014

Using Analytics to Create Change: USA.gov Usability Case Study

While many people tout the death of the home page, it’s still an important piece of the user experience on USA.gov. In 2013, 30 percent of all sessions on USA.gov included the home page—that’s 8.67 million sessions. The numbers for GobiernoUSA.gov are even higher—79 percent of all sessions included the home page. According to Jakob Nielsen, “A

Michelle Chronister

Jul 01, 2014

Trends on Tuesday: Maximizing Your Mobile Moments

The rise of mobile device ownership is rapidly changing the way we, and our stakeholders, interact with organizations and information. From local weather to the status of our train, we look to our smartphones to not only provide the answers, but anticipate our questions. Forrester refers to this

Treci Johnson

Jul 01, 2014

Multilingual Digital Content

Federal agencies are required to provide meaningful access to government information to people with limited English proficiency. This applies to your agency’s digital content too. You need to determine how much information you need to provide in other languages, based on an assessment of your audience.

Laura Godfrey

Leilani Martinez

Jul 01, 2014

Big Data, Open Data & the Federal Agencies

Open data and big data—and the responsible management and protection of that data—are key components of the President’s agenda to drive innovation and economic growth. On Thursday, June 19, leaders from civil society, industry, academia, and 40 federal departments and agencies met at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Massive Data Institute to discuss

Nick Sinai

Nicole Wong

Jul 01, 2014

508 Accessible Videos—Why (and How) to Make Them

Making Web content and video accessible to people with disabilities is the law. Ensuring a video is accessible requires planning. Taking steps from day one will save you time and money. To verify that a video is accessible you’d need to incorporate three elements: Captioning Audio descriptions An Accessible video player Why Accessibility Matters Many government

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – Use a 508-Compliant Video Player

When you watch a video on your computer, the window that displays your video is called a “video player.” It usually has start, pause, and other buttons. You might not be aware that you’re using a player at all—you just watch your video. A fully-accessible video player (e.g. Section 508-compliant)

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – How to Make Audio Descriptions

What are Audio Descriptions? Audio Description, also called descriptive video or video description, is an additional audio track that describes and gives context for essential visual information. Audio Description makes videos and multimedia accessible to people who have “low vision” (very poor vision), or who are blind, by capturing what

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – How to Caption Videos

What are Captions? In a video, captions collect all audio information and describe them using text. They include not only spoken content but also non-speech information such as sound effects, music, laughter, and speaker identification and location (for example, audio spoken off-screen). Captions appear transposed over the visual elements in

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jonathan Rubin

Jun 30, 2014

The more public information is digitized, the more it lands on or sprouts from social media channels. This is why there needs to be a greater level of awareness and consideration for those who can benefit most from that information—people with disabilities, since they have the least access to it.

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Jun 30, 2014

The Federal #SocialGov Community, a collective of almost 700 digital engagement managers from more than 120 government agencies, marked the 2nd anniversary of our program by releasing a suite of new collaborative services to help us better work together and with partners in

Justin Herman

Jun 30, 2014

Is It Tweet-Worthy?

The Web now contains over 1.51 billion pages of content, according to WorldWideWebSize.com. That’s a lot of reading material, and a lot of content competing with yours for attention. People won’t waste time (even a few seconds) on an article that doesn’t matter to them in some way—not when there are so many other interesting

Rachel Flagg

Jun 30, 2014

You Have the Data, Make the Most of It

With Web analytics tools you have the data to see what citizens really want on your website and how well you are delivering. You have an opportunity to make informed decisions on improvements to your site to reflect the voice of the customer and get constituents what they need. Here are

Sarah Kaczmarek

Jun 27, 2014

Broadcasting Board of Governors Use “Relay” Tool to Cover the World Cup

World Cup fever, everyone’s got it—even the Broadcasting Board of Governors‘ (BBG) Voice of America has reporters covering the event. For this year’s World Cup, VOA has teamed up with the Office of Digital and Design Innovation (a digital team inside

Jacob Parcell

Jun 26, 2014

Deloitte Analysis: Craft of Incentive Prize Design

Federal challenge and prize competitions are in the news again. Our colleagues across government participated in research that resulted in a new report released June 19 from Deloitte University Press, The Craft of Prize Design: Lessons from the public sector. In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to

Tammi Marcoullier

Jun 26, 2014

Case Studies in Thunderclap

Now that Thunderclap has been approved for government use for nearly a year, we checked in with two agencies that have successfully used the crowd-speaking tool to rally their supporters and amplify their messages.

Alison Lemon

Jun 25, 2014