Ramsey County wanted to centralize and streamline digital access to County information and transactions for their audiences. And, over the course of our 18-month partnership, that’s exactly what we collaboratively achieved. We started with an information portal and transformed their website into a hub of active service delivery and community engagement.
Project Strategy: Focus on Users, Current and Future
As the most diverse county in the state of Minnesota, the site users represent a large and varied population, including residents, businesses, and visitors. Armed with a collection of primary and secondary research with County stakeholders and residents, we identified three key strategies to guide the research, planning and development of the Drupal website:
- Reprioritize content to focus on user tasks
- Design for accessibility and a diverse audience (including meeting WCAG and 508 standards and designing with plain language initiatives)
- Launch strategically so the site can support the future digital roadmap
Project Scope: Complex, Comprehensive, and Absolutely Fantastic
Where do we start? We were lucky enough to embark on a partnership with Ramsey County that included everything from strategy, information architecture, UX, and design, to technical evaluations — including recommending a CMS platform and a Platform as a Service hosting partner. So that all constituents could access the information they need, one of the most important factors for them was meeting the accessibility standards mentioned above. To this end, Ramsey County partnered with The Paciello Group and Fredrickson Communications to test the site against all accessibility and usability requirements (respectively) and in collaboration with Clockwork, made sure this business objective was achieved. The website now clearly embodies the ‘Residents First’ approach the County Board has embraced in it’s new vision, mission, and goals.
