Oakland City Projects
Duration
Two weeks
Tools
Sketch
my role
User experience design, Content hierarchy
opportunity
Hundreds of projects that serve city residents
The city of Oakland has dozens of active projects at any given time, ranging from road and bridge repairs to improving pedestrian safety and controlling for creek erosion.
A vast amount of information currently lives on the city website, but without organization it can difficult for city residents to find the specific information they need.
scope
The city website’s CMS uses template pages that allow city employees to easily create and update content whenever there are new projects or changes to projects. I focused on redesigning for the Project Index page and for the Project page template.
solutions
Organizing by place and time
The new version of the Project Index would provide more direct information about the location and status of projects. Users can look up projects based on geographic location, date, and status.
Many moving parts
The amount of information can vary depending on the scope and complexity of the project. Working with city officials, we identified all potential types of content and developed a flexible layout that would accommodate all of them while maintaining a clear hierarchy of information.
Choose a path in-page
Rather than show all content at once or direct users to multiple pages, in the new design they will be able to view the highest-level information for a variety of types of content and choose to view more without leaving the page.
results
The new version of the Project Index page is scheduled for development in 2020. The new version of the Project Page Template was launched in 2019, and new project pages have started to incorporate the updated page structure.