New FEMA.gov Design
"FEMA.gov" serves as the nation’s portal to emergency information in times of disaster. In the month that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall along the Gulf Coast in August, 2005, more than 14 million visits and 400 million hits were logged on the website. For five straight weeks, more than 500,000 individuals, per week, applied for assistance or checked the status of their application using our online registration system.
To better serve those who look to our website for timely and accurate emergency and disaster information, we will be launching a completely re-engineered FEMA.gov website on April 6th, 2006. Among many other improvements, the new site will showcase a completely restructured, customer-driven and easy-to-use navigation system and a new streamlined look and feel developed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The restructuring of the site will make it easier for citizens, emergency personnel, businesses, and federal, state, and local government agencies to quickly get to the information they need on the agency’s disaster training, preparation, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts and services.
The FEMA website will be the first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) site to roll out the Department’s new web branding that features a simple, yet distinctive interface. The common usage of typography, color and page layout found throughout our new pages will eventually be used across all of the component agency’s sites.
The redesigned fema.gov will also meet President Bush’s directive to use electronic media to provide citizens with timely, accurate, and consistent information about government services and operations. It will also meet Secretary Chertoff’s directive to improve customer service and ensure timely and accurate information during an emergency.
Milestones in the development of the new FEMA.gov website
FEMA conducted a year-long usability study of the site and is implementing recommendations from victims of disasters and those involved in disaster response and recovery efforts. The development of the new FEMA.gov site has been in high gear since October 2005 and implements several lessons learned from last year’s hurricane season.
Several steps that were taken along the way to get the new site to where it is now, included:
(1) Information gathering and needs analysis:
- Conducting internal interviews with senior staff and program personnel, knowledgeable of customer needs, to identify the tasks visitors were looking to complete online.
- Analyzing extensive customer service information from phone calls, e-mails, and web metrics including web logs, search logs, and online customer satisfaction surveys.
- Conducting an internal online user survey
- Analyzing user information to develop user profiles and personas.
- Conducting a user and goal-oriented task analysis.
- Developing task lists, task matrixes and task/process flow diagrams.
(2) Definition of site goals:
- Identifying the paramount goals of the site:
- To effectively communicate accurate information about FEMA’s services to a variety of audiences with different needs.
- To provide timely information/updates during emergency situations to help citizens better plan for, prepare and protect their lives and property (homes and businesses) from the wrath of disasters.
- To provide a tool so citizens, residents, states and emergency personnel can submit/retrieve disaster assistance online instead of standing in line.
(3) Iterative usability testing:
- Conducting usability testing with representative users of the website, including: disaster victims affected by hurricanes, emergency personnel, insurance agents, realtors and architects.
- Using the results of user testing to identify usability issues and make research-based recommendations for improvement.
- Testing the revised website to show measured improvements in users' abilities to effectively and efficiently find information. The new website helps to:
- improve user performance by 93%,
- reduce the time it takes users to find information by nearly half,
- improve user satisfaction from 49% to 71%.
(4) Internal training:
- Conducting "Writing for the Web" workshops that emphasized usability and plain language writing and information organization techniques.
- Conducting multiple brainstorming sessions to identify and understand hierarchy’s of information on the web and the best categorization of that information.
- Developing and disseminating a standard set of policies governing the content on the FEMA.gov site.
- Providing one-on-one content reviews focusing on usability methods and techniques.
(5) Content development and management:
- Developing a plan to create and update content with priorities based on content inventory and usability testing.
- Creating a content task force and working groups within FEMA.
- Eliminating redundant or conflicting information.
- Making information relating to an audience or topic accessible from a central page organized for that specific audience or topic.
- Streamlining content to eliminate jargon and making better use of headers and bulleted lists to make it easier for visitors to read and understand the information being provided.
- Implementing a new content management system that makes it easier for people to review and edit their content while also ensuring that existing content is periodically reviewed and updated as needed.
(6) Information architecture development:
- Developing site categorization and information architecture.
- Developing site map and page wireframes (schematics), including home page categories.
- Creating wireframes for home page, second tier pages, navigation pages and landing pages and converted those wireframes into CMS templates.
- Implementing a site-wide navigational strategy.
- Testing information architecture with users.
(7) Streamlining the Homepage:
- Simplifying the home page so that it is not as overwhelming.
- Consolidating information into cohesive, citizen-centric categories that are logical, clear and intuitive to users.
- Providing multiple pathways to information, including audience-based, topic-based, and location/Regional-based navigation.
- Creating logical groups of links to help users determine how navigation areas differ from each other and quickly establish a mental model.
- Using link labels that are immediately clear and are not ambiguous or vague. Eliminated the need for visitors to understand the FEMA organization in order to find information.
- Updating out-of-date and/or inaccurate content.
The new homepage has been designed to quickly get visitors to the information they are seeking.
After the launch, FEMA will conduct ongoing usability testing of the site and analysis of Web metrics (including user research, customer comments, Web traffic reports, and the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), an industry standard for measuring Web site performance over time) to continually improve the site. FEMA will listen to and work with users of the site to ensure that it continues to be an effective communication tool for disseminating information about the agency’s national and regional emergency management efforts and services.
Check back for a more detailed outline of the strategic plan for the future of the fema.gov website.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 05-Apr-2006 10:39:56 EDT