Department of Homeland Security
Homeland Security Redesign
The purpose of this redesign was to make DHS more user-friendly by allowing users to locate important information quicker without having to dig through the website.
The Purpose of DHS
The Department of Homeland Security works to improve the security of the United States. The Departments work includes, customs, border patrol, and immigration enforcement, emergency response to natural and manmade disasters, antiterrorism work, and cybersecurity.
The Problem
The website is not intuitive and not efficiently structured, poor design and low levels of accessibility make it difficult and time consuming for users to navigate the website when trying to locate information.
Website Analysis
Majority of website visitors are located in the United States.
In the last month 10,123,167 people visited the DHS disaster assistance page.
The next common webpages have to do with TSA enrolment and Precheck.
The most viewed pages are in relation to immigrations.
268.1 million people have visited the website in the past 90 days.
Only 21.8% of users are international.
Most common download from the DHS website are affidavits of support with a count of 2,914 a day.
User Testing
We needed to find out how our users navigate the DHS website and identify user pain points, success rate of tasks, and elements that could be implemented for higher rates of success. We created four tasks/scenarios for our users to click through which were applying for a passport, utilizing the search bar, check TSA wait time, and to seek out a job application.
Site Map
In our card sorting we discovered and concluded that certain navigation titles weren’t the right fit to ensure communication in regards to the users needs. We decided to change some navigation titles and re-organize the secondary navigation. We eliminated some items we felt were redundant and/or confusing.
