My Role
I drove this project as the lead strategist, researcher, designer, and developer. I worked closely with a content strategist and was supported by a talented team of product managers and developers.
Goals
- Drive adoption and engagement of the three CMS Claims Data APIs (AB2D, BCDA, and DPC)
- Improve the sites' developer experience
- Establish a standardized design system, templates, and processes.
Research Methods
- User Journey Map (IMG)
- Current State Site Mapping
- Gap Analysis
- Card Sort (IMG)
- 34/36 task flows validated under new information architecture
- Competitive Analysis (IMG)
- Usability Testing
For example, "Where would you go to learn more about how you might use AB2D for your business needs?" instead of "Does this product fit your business needs?"
- Users expressed frustration when searching for the About and Use Cases pages.
"Where'd that page go?" – Engineer
"Ok, where was I before?" – Designer
"I want to find permitted uses next since I read that on home. Now where?" – Product Manager
"Is there an easier nav to find these things?" – Designer
- 3/7 users could not find the Onboarding page in under 2 minutes
AB2D-Specific Research
- User personas
- Qualitative user interviews focused on API use cases
- Web Analytics
Example: Content drilldown informed navigation hierarchy
Top pages that users navigated to from the homepage:
- 42% - Try the API
- 20% - Understanding the Data
- 18% - Getting Started
- Pain Point Inventory
- User needs statements
Approach
- Focus on the developer experience
- Diataxis documentation framework
- AAARRRP framework for developer relations strategy
- Focus on standardized site components, templates, and design patterns
- Faster time to delivery
- Repeatability
- Easier long-term maintenance
- User-tested and validated
- Content-first
- Plain language
We developed a content style guide for the Data Analytics and Strategy Group (DASG) at CMS to establish program-specific guidelines
- Agile and iterative
- Pages with complex content or user needs were mocked up in Figma for quicker reviews, experimentation, and iteration.
- Pages with straightforward content, such as documentation pages, were built directly on Jekyll templates in the development environment.
- After all pages were built, we proceeded with final team review and approval
Design
- Implemented a researched, user-tested and validated universal information architecture.
- Leveraged USWDS for maintainability and consistency with other CMS Claims Data API and government websites.
- Created an AB2D brand style guide
- Designed templates for each type of page (Home, About, Documentation, etc)
- User tested and validated
- Conformant with industry standards
- Responsive
- Accessible (WCAG AA)
- Customizable with Markdown and HTML
- Documentation Template (the one where each component is explained)
User testing
Quote from user testing: When asked, "Where would you go to learn more about how you might use AB2D for your business needs?" 100% of users brought up use cases
User Testing Insight
In AB2D usability tests, technical task flows using this navigation template had a perfect success rates with technical users.
The AB2D Data pages did NOT use this template at the time of testing, which provided a control.
"I'd expect to find a Data Dictionary and sample files here…. [clicked on page] And yeah, there they are." – CMS Engineer