United States Senate committee on
Foreign Relations
I’ve designed more than 100 websites for various members of the United States Congress—including representatives, senators, and various committees and other government factions. Designing for the government presents a specific set of challenges. Budgets and timelines are extraordinarily tight and the primary stakeholder (e.g. member or senator) is often not brought in until the late stages of development. Government site analytics are very clear—the three most visited pages are: Home, About, and Contact. Knowing this, it can become a bit like the challenge of creating menu items for Taco Bell—take the same few ingredients and present them in a new and exciting way each time.
We began by creating wireframes in Balsamiq, allowing the project manager (usually a young staffer) to obtain approval on the IA, layout, and basic contents before spending time on look and feel.
01 / wireframes
02 / homepage layout options
Once a wireframe had been approved, we moved on to experimenting with look and feel. This involved researching the history of the person or committee.
Color palettes were another challenge as government clients naturally want to default to red or blue themes and certain colors (pink, purple) were non-starters. Often, I would pull a palette from the office or meeting room interiors or something related to a congressperson’s state of constituency.