CASE STUDY 02: U.S. BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL LABOR AFFAIRS
Launched
12 March 2022
Role
UI/UX Designer
Design team of one
Team
1x UI/UX Designer
1x Product Manager
2x Developers
Project context
I lead the website redesign for the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to enhance humanitarian project visibility and increase retention.
Impact
The new design grounds and contextualizes the information displayed
Increased user engagement and retention
The lead developer was quite skilled in UI design, so the team had already made some initial progress on the design front (more on that soon), which was quickly handed over to me. I learned right away that design decisions would be shaped by the constraints of Drupal, the framework upon which the web app was built.
I was also informed that this project would prioritize client requirements over user research, meaning that we were taking on additional risks with user acceptance later on.
A quick heuristic evaluation of what we had to work with revealed some fundamental issues with usability that would directly impact dropoff rates and engagement.
The changes improved their userbase’s ability to locate things they were looking for, accomplish tasks without giving up, and discover new site elements they weren’t previously familiar with.
Tags were an interesting challenge to pull together because it was a lot to iron out on the back end data side, but their value in connecting projects was large enough to warrant it.
There wasn’t an existing way to display data (meaning reports, learnings, projects, etc.), which meant users weren’t likely to know they existed. That also meant that users had no basis for the value created by these initiatives.
01
03
01
02
The client requested we created a Knowledge Portal housing all reports, learnings, resources, and projects. My idea to use an interactive map stemmed from ILAB being a global force with impact felt across borders.
We were limited with what we could do on the motion design side, because our developers’ hands were tied with our use of Drupal.
Results achieved
The ILAB website redesign puts people and humanitarian initiatives first, and I’m really proud of that! This was a project whose quality would decline with any frills– the simpler, the better. And the result? Contextualized humanitarian efforts and successes allowing the content to speak for itself.
What I learned
I learned how to remain flexible when our developers were limited by the use of Drupal, which the rest of the Bureau’s website is hosted on. In practice, this looked like a back-and forth with some strain at times, but all in service of wanting to create the best product and best serve our client. Most of all. I learned I wanted to work on more projects that supported good work that made a difference.
