Department of Enterprise Services (DES) Website Redesign

Summary of project and strategy

Anthro-Tech partnered with the Washington State Department of Enterprise Services (DES) to improve the user experience of their website (des.wa.gov). DES’s website attracts a diverse audience, serving up a wealth of information and resources for the public, businesses, government agencies, and state employees.

The current website consists of migrated content from five agencies that combined in 2011 to create DES. The website did not mature with the agency and was difficult to navigate. It’s one-size fits all information architecture made it difficult for any given audience group to understand what applied to them and find what they needed.

Anthro-Tech worked with DES to redesign the website to improve usability, better accomplish business objectives, give the site a more modern look and feel, and develop a future-forward strategy to help the agency stay current with customer needs on an ongoing basis.

Goal(s) or Objective(s) that was set out for the project/campaign

In Phase 1 of this project, Anthro-Tech partnered with DES to redesign the top levels of the information architecture to align with users’ expectations and needs, apply new visual design, and improve content and lower-level navigation in the “Contracts & Procurement” portion of the website. We created a new homepage and a refreshed navigation focused on top tasks that better aligns with users’ mental models. Our team conducted a top task workshop, card sorts, and tree tests to inform this refreshed navigation. We also updated the DES-branded look for global headers, footers, main pages, and key content. Other content will be improved in future phases.

Results & Impact

Phase I of the website redesign recently launched and received much praise for its simplicity and ease of use. Users can now find what they need, understand what they find, and accomplish their goals.