WSDOT Website Redesign

Anthro-Tech partnered with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to develop a redesigned website with improved user-centered information architecture, content strategy, and accessible response design. Our objective was to design a useful, usable, and accessible website that was centered around users’ needs.

The website, wsdot.wa.gov, is the most visited in WA state government with over 75,000 daily users looking up real-time traffic alerts, getting information for a ferry ride, finding manuals and standards, finding contracting opportunities, and checking the progress on construction projects. At the onset of this project, the website had not been updated in 15 years.

Some of WSDOT's goals included determining who the primary users of the website are, ensure users can find content, manage the volume of content on the website, and create a clear governance structure.

We worked closely with various technical and communications teams at WSDOT and used a user-centered design strategy of discovery and research, design and development, evaluation and iteration, and finally, launching the product. Throughout the course of the project from 2019 through 2021, over 20,000 users provided feedback to the evolving website, driving design, content, and accessibility changes.

By spreading awareness and adoption of the user-centered approach with teams at WSDOT, we modeled how to understand customer needs and better serve information and tools that support safe travel and business with the agency.

The result is a complete overhaul of the design of the site, a reduction of content from 14,000 pages to less than 2,000, and clear content layout. We improved the website system usability score by 27 points, from grade F to A. The new website is accessible on any device and users can find the important travel information they need quickly and efficiently without frustration. The website launched in November 2021, just in time to support Washingtonians traveling through the holidays and navigating impacts of winter storms. The responsive mobile design served a more optimized experience for around 5.3 million visitors from November through December 2021.