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Making Critical Government Information More Resilient
on June 4, 2020
A roundup of steps that federal agencies, and other government entities, can take right now to improve the resilience of their websites and serve information more efficiently to the people that need it
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A token of our affection - A field guide to USWDS 2
on April 21, 2020
We recently worked with the cloud.gov team to update their public site, cloud.gov, to United States Web Design System 2. The USWDS provided concepts we were able to use to translate designs into code a lot faster and deliver higher fidelity results once we understood how to use them.
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Even with a design system, you still need a designer
on February 6, 2020
The US Web Design System gives flexibility so teams can build the right solution for users, but there are still plenty of design decisions that teams need to make to be successful.
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How Federalist and USWDS 2.0 helps agencies become compliant
on June 20, 2019
Two month ago the U.S. Web Design System 2.0 (USWDS) launched exciting new features including improved accessibility and flexible layouts. This is great news for content editors and website managers. In today’s post, we'd like to show you how you, your team, or your agency can get started with USWDS 2.0 using Federalist.
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 5 - Centralization gone right: A case study on the U.S. Web Design System
on May 21, 2019
This is part 5 and the last post in a series on the importance of human-centered design when evaluating IT centralization. Learn through a case study how The U.S. Web Design System came together to create a centralized design tool that allows agencies to build consistent digital experiences quickly and at a reduced cost.
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Introducing USWDS 2.0: Reinvent the experience, not the wheel
on April 8, 2019
Today, we’re launching U.S. Web Design System 2.0 (USWDS 2.0), a new foundation for the future of our design system. This new version was designed to make it easier for any project to integrate USWDS and use it to support both your mission and the needs of your audience.
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4 benefits to using the full TTS technology stack
on March 27, 2018
When Performance.gov re-launched on February 12, it became one of hopefully many websites to use the full suite of the Technology Transformation Services’ (TTS) products and services, from hosting to design.
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A new home for the federal plain language community
on February 22, 2018
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is one of the longest-standing champions for great content and user experience in government. A small team from 18F worked closely with DigitalGov and PLAIN to redesign plainlanguage.gov, making it more modern and usable.
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Building a large-scale design system: How we created a design system for the U.S. government
on October 3, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards launched in September 2015 as a visual style guide and UI component library with the goal of bringing a common design language for government websites all under one hood. Learn how the team unified a complex system with numerous rules to serve users from all corners of the country.
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Fractal and Federalist join the U.S. Web Design Standards
on June 6, 2017
We've added two powerful, new tools to the U.S. Web Design Standards development workflow. Fractal is a development, testing, and documentation tool, and Federalist is an 18F hosting platform that makes it easy to generate previews and simplify our process.
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How the U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses the U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 30, 2017
In this second post in our series, we met with the team at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and learned how they used the Standards to train, develop, and design their various websites and applications.
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NASA’s journey with the U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 21, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards are currently implemented on hundreds of government sites, with an audience of more than 26 million monthly users, and they’ve been recommended by the Office of Management and Budget for all government agencies. We chatted with [Furious Otter]*, Senior Software Developer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, to talk about his team’s use of the U.S. Web Design Standards.
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U.S. Web Design Standards releases version 1.0
on March 13, 2017
The U.S. Web Design Standards are a library of design guidelines and code to help government developers quickly create trustworthy, accessible, and consistent digital government services. Last week, we announced the 1.0 release of the Standards, a milestone that signals the Standards are a stable, trustworthy resource for government designers and developers.
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Charting the future of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on December 22, 2016
As part of the latest release of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards, we updated our design principles to better represent the evolving goals of this project. This update shows how we’re growing our open source community, focusing on experimenting with more complex components and maturing the Standards to be more mobile-focused.
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Reimagining federal websites with the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on May 17, 2016
[Appealing Echidna]*, a user-interface designer and front end web developer working with Sandia National Labs, decided to use the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards to reimagine cia.gov as well as a prototype for a new mobile and web experience for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
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Three teams using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards talk about their experiences
on April 5, 2016
In the five months since we launched the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards over a dozen websites have used components of the Draft Standards on their sites. Recently, we talked to three federal web designers about their experiences using the Draft Standards.
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Developing the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards’ UI components
on April 1, 2016
We’ve received many questions about the UI components that are in the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards. In this post, we’ll talk about how we built the components to be accessible so anyone can use them, the structure of our CSS and JavaScript stacks, and how it’s being adapted to work with other frameworks, like WordPress and Drupal.
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Best practices for building an accessible website using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 29, 2016
When you work for the federal government, accessibility isn’t simply a nice-to-have — it’s the law. That’s why the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards set developers on the path of creating websites that anyone can use. The Draft Standards feature documentation that can help you keep your websites accessible, even after you make modifications.
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How design consistency helps users navigate federal websites
on March 25, 2016
We launched the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, and over the next month, we plan to explore various topics related to design standards. In this post, we detail how our user research informed the decision decisions we made.
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How to integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into existing projects
on March 23, 2016
One of the most common questions we receive is: Should I integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into my existing project? The answer is: it depends.
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How user archetypes informed the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 18, 2016
To celebrate Sunshine Week, we’re highlighting some groundbreaking open government work by the Department of the Treasury, one of 18F’s partner agencies.
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Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards better through your feedback
on March 16, 2016
Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.
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Designing services that are accessible, transparent, and easy for all to use
on March 11, 2016
We're publishing a full report to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. Today we end the series with a look at what we’ll focus on in the next stage of research.
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What people think about before deciding to share personal information with the government
on March 10, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll share what people think about before deciding to share personal information with the government.
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Trust as a two-way street between the government and the people it serves
on March 9, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll detail when people decide to trust the federal government and how they view the federal government vs. private companies.
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Too many options make complicated decisions harder
on March 8, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll talk about how choice overload affects decision-making.
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Transparency within government helps build public trust
on March 7, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail the need for transparency in government so that the public can “see” the process they’re undergoing when they’re interacting with federal agencies and programs.
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How people use proxies to interact with the federal government
on March 4, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail how people interact with the government using proxies.
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How people learn to navigate government services
on March 3, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail how people learn to navigate government services and what barriers exist to accessing services.
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Strategies people use when interacting with the federal government
on March 2, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail the strategies people use when interacting with the government.
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What we learned after interviewing dozens of people about their interactions with the federal government
on March 1, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail our initial research questions and what we learned.
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Informing the future of the Federal Front Door
on February 29, 2016
Today, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research on the Federal Front Door, as well as a microsite that will contain future research findings related to these topics. In the coming days, we’ll also be publishing the complete report on the 18F blog.
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Happy Valentine's Day from the U.S. Web Design Standards team
on February 12, 2016
This Valentine’s Day, we’re sharing some love from the Standards, which include a library of open source UI components and a visual style guide for U.S. federal government websites. These tools — and these Valentine’s Day cards — follow industry-standard web accessibility guidelines and use the best practices of existing style libraries and modern web design.
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GSA.gov refreshed with eye toward mobile users
on November 17, 2015
GSA unveiled a refreshed gsa.gov website yesterday with a more crisp design layout, improved usability, and features geared more toward mobile users.
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Introducing the U.S. Web Design Standards
on September 28, 2015
The U.S. Web Design Standards is the U.S. government’s very own set of common UI components and visual styles for websites. It’s a resource designed to make things easier for government designers and developers, while raising the bar on what the American people can expect from their digital experiences.
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