Award-Winning Government Transformation
Project Overview
What does the Utah County Government do?
From Real Estate Tax System to Public Health Dashboard, these services are lifelines for residents.
25
Departments with digital solutions
30+
Public Web Applications
700k
Citizens and Non-Citizens Users
The Core Problems Driving Our Initiative
The Business Problem
Costly post-launch UX problems eroded public trust and made our stakeholders (the other 24 departments) question their ROI. We needed to restore their confidence to secure our budget for our critical migration to modern web frameworks.
The User Problem
Our 700,000+ citizens faced frustrating patchwork of digital services plagued by accessibility issues and broken navigation, making them hesitant to provide the sensitive data required for essential services, which in turn caused delays and errors in service delivery.
Strategy
Diagnosing Execution Failures
After our initial style guide failed to scale, I interviewed our development teams to diagnose the root causes. I mapped their entire workflow to pinpoint the exact sources of friction and delay.
I found three root causes that were stalling our style guide adoption. This is how I planned to solve them:
01
📚 Problem:
Abstract Tools
Our style guide was too abstract, lacking the coded components developers needed to build efficiently and consistently.
🧱 Solution:
A Functional Design System
Expand the guide into a dev-friendly system with a copy/paste component library.
02
🥶 Problem: Rigid Workflow
A rigid waterfall process prevented early feedback, leading to costly late-stage rebuilds and making budget estimates unreliable.
🤸♀️ Solution: A Hybrid-Agile Process
Replace our old method with an iterative workflow that integrated early feedback.
03
🐌 Problem: Centralized Governance
As the sole design approver, I was a bottleneck that made the entire system unscalable.
👯♂️ Solution: A Delegated UX Committee
I proposed forming a cross-functional committee to decentralize design decisions and empower the teams.
Project Roadmap
2023 Q3
Secure Buy-In Using Pilot Project
The first step in rebuilding trust was to demonstrate immediate value. I started by showcasing how we fixed the navigation issues our residents complained about most through redesigning the main county website.
The overwhelming positive feedback of this pilot project from residents and employees was what ultimately convinced department heads to green-light the larger initiative.
User Persona Goals
A User-Centric IA
To fix the chaotic navigation menu, we rebuilt the county's information architecture around user tasks instead of internal departments.
Navigation Bar—Before
"The menus are just a huge, overwhelming wall of links. I can't find what I'm looking for."
"I don't understand half these government terms. What's a 'Parcel Inquiry' supposed to mean?"
—Citizen & Internal Users
Navigation Bar—After
" For the first time, the county website actually makes sense. I found what I needed in two clicks instead of twenty minutes. It's such a relief."
—Brenda, Citizen User
A Better Search
Our research showed over 40% of our users prefer using a search bar over menus, so we replaced our unreliable Google search with a powerful, in-house AI solution.
Rebuilt User Trust
✅ Guaranteed official results
📉 Real-time suggestions to reduce interaction cost
🧠 Understands natural language & typos
Proved Our Value
🏛️ $200k+ more cost-effective than external smart search solutions
🦾 Demonstrated in-house AI capabilities
👩🏻💻 Allowed for full control of search results
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2023 Q4
Create a Dev-friendly Design System
With buy-in secured, we executed the next phase of the plan: expanding the style guide into a functional design system that solved the "Tooling Problem."
User Persona Goals
Components & Patterns
Through an audit of all our disjointed web services, we identified that our most common layout patterns are "service one-stop" page, instructional page, and data-entry form. We then created modular components and templates for these patterns, ensuring consistency in user flows while allowing departments the branding flexibility they required.
Built with
Coded Solutions
I knew Figma design alone wouldn't guarantee quality, so I consulted our developers for the best approach: Should we adopt a commercial UI library or build an in-house solution?
My hypothesis was that our developers would favor flexibility and performance over a restrictive third-party library. Interviews confirmed this unanimously. They chose a straightforward copy/paste component library paired with a Tailwind theme package.
This approach gave them maximum ease of customization, enabled easy batch updates across all services, and provided built-in WCAG 2.2 compliance.
Integrated with
2024 Q1
Pilot New Workflow & UX Governance
Finally, we addressed the workflow and governance failures by introducing a new operational model.
A Hybrid-Agile Workflow
We replaced the rigid waterfall process with an iterative workflow that integrated UX validation at key stages, eliminating late-stage rebuilds.
A Decentralized UX Committee
I formed and led a cross-functional committee to delegate quality control and design decisions. This eliminated my bottleneck and gave other teams a sense of ownership, turning our most vocal critics into the system's biggest advocates.
User Persona Goals
Hybrid Workflow
The integration of UX validation points within an agile structure. To support implementation, we also created a detailed process flow-chart.
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Impact
2024 Q3
🇺🇸 National Recognition
Our redesign effort was recognized by the National Association of Counties (NACo) for its best-in-class improvements to digital service delivery and operational efficiency.
Project Outcomes
Business Viability
$3.3 M
Target budget secured for web modernization
80%
Departments completed the adoption of the new design system
$0
Net cost, as savings from the design system fully funded its own development.
User Impact
100%
WCAG 2.2 compliance on new projects
150%
Increased public service utilization
4.2
/5
User rating
Operational Efficiency
40%
Reduced developer time spend on rework and redundant tasks