Redesigning the Government, One Home Page at a Time

Posted May 25, 2010 // 0 comments

Recently, I had the happy opportunity to participate in Sunlight Lab's Design for America Challenge. Happy, because I'm gung-ho about this organization's stated mission: "To make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public." The five grand prize was nothing to sneeze at, either.

Part of the stated challenge was to select a redesign target whose improvement might result in bettering the lives of the most people as possible. With input from Phase2 colleagues, I chose the Small Business Administrative, SBA.GOV. According to the SBA, small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers. The improvement of a website that helped those employers thrive could potentially result in a lower national unemployment rate and better management practices. Because of a limited amount of time, I chose to design the homepage only.

Design improvements included introducing a wider page layout and more white space for easier viewing, simplifying graphics, and increasing contrast.

View the full contest entry.

The challenge coincides with the start of Phase2's new project: OpenPublic, a bundling of key Drupal modules and features which will make it easier and faster for government websites to comply with President Obama's Open Government Directive.