City of San Juan Texas
Redesiged civic government website to be more accessible, discoverable, and maintainable.
The City of San Juan, Texas relied on an outdated website that served as the primary digital hub for residents to:
the legacy website no longer matched modern expectations for government digital experiences.
As the city expanded services and aimed to feel more approachable with a civic brand slogan "The Friendly City", the legacy website no longer matched modern expectations for government digital experiences.
Outdated, unstructured navigation; visual inconsistencies; mobile friction; difficult to maintain; cybersecurity risks from self-hosting (DDoS crashes).
Primary hub for residents to
There was little in the way of city brand, aside from a few colors and a city seal.
San Juan wasn't known for the best reasons, so I saw an opportunity to build something valuable to influence digital civic engagement across all digital touch points.
The legacy site was suffering from a lack of structure which led to a disorienting navigation, and visual inconsistencies.
This led to unnecessary friction for residents needing quick access to essentials like utility payments, court fines, permits, job openings, or event info, especially on mobile.
Maintenance was a challenge as well, global style settings were untidy and caused for inconsistency in spacing, color and typography.
To top it off, due to poor foundation via self-hosting, the site would crash due to DDoS attacks, a major risk for cybersecurity.
Through my research I found Government websites succeed when they prioritized "task completion speed" over everything else.
GA4 events showed that residents visit to accomplish 3 specific actions:
Being Accessible and Easy to Navigate would help with our SEO.
Restructured the homepage into clear, scannable sections. Consolidated repetitive links, added dedicated sections that followed department-specific logic, and ensured consistent UX Copywriting language.
introduced a consistent visual language with consistent typography, iconography
Developed a prominent Site-Wide Search bar, created direct paths to essential resident functions (Payments, Agendas, Alerts, Reporting, etc.) and event dating for better visibility.
Provided a clean hierarchy and effective spacing to make a fast Task Completion Speed easy to attain.
The updated site feels welcoming and professional.
Residents can now quickly find and complete high-frequency tasks without scrolling through clutter.
Key improvements include:
Overall, it positions the city as more professional, responsive and "friendly" to align with our city brand.
True UX Research came in the form of working directly with each department's Administrative Assistant/Secretary, as they were seeing the day-to-day impacts from the lacking website.
Calculating how many hours would be saved through a streamlined website organization and subsequent processes empowered me to defend design decisions in stakeholder meetings.
The subjective nature of design was curbed by the analytical data I was able to gather by working alongside the workers who handle the mundane tasks of running the city government.