Designing and maintaining websites is one of the biggest challenges for any public agency. We operate inside of bureaucratic structures that long predate the web, and we often have specific security considerations that aren’t shared by our counterparts in the private sector. Budgetary restrictions make it challenging to recruit excellent developers and often preclude iterative redesigns, while layered review processes slow development further. By the time our websites are completed, they are often already out-of-date.

At the Washington State Health Care Authority, we consistently heard from our visitors that our website was difficult to navigate. In 2019, we began to lightly redesign select webpages to improve the user experience; by 2021, we committed to an ambitious plan to redesign our entire website.

The new design is clean, open, easy-to-navigate, and most importantly, fully accessible.

Role: Art director
Credits: Kira Young, web designer