Case Study:

Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency

Request: Create UX wireframes and prototypes for our four portals: Applicant, Resident, Retiree and Caseworker. Make compelling responsive designs and user journeys based on User research and needs.

My Process: I started out with researching the user demographic which was mainly families on the lower income scale often under educated and under privileged but hard-working family-oriented people trying to better their lives and situations.  The age group varied from portal to portal some of which were self-defined, i.e., caseworker vs retiree.

I researched many government housing sites and found that a high percentage tended to be text heavy, small font, and very user unfriendly. The result made the user feel like a number without humanity or dignity. The pages were often outdated, bland and glitchy making for a frustrating user interaction with forms etc.

The wireframes I created mapped out an intuitive user flow with a couple ways to arrive at the same place, always mindful of giving the user a way to retrace their steps.  My goal was to get the user where they needed to be in the least possible clicks with pleasant user interactions with forms, graphics, and downloads.

I set out to create a user experience that reflected the mission of Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, “to revitalize communities, provide affordable housing opportunities and to serve as the Housing Authority for the City and County of Sacramento.” I also wanted the site to reflect the dignity humanity and worth of the agency’s clients.

What I did: After Iterations of Mockups, Prototypes and revisions (I worked with a wonderful team of back-end developers who were very communicative), I decided to make a government site that was visually beautiful, pulled out all the UI stops, like JavaScript animations on the buttons, and a friendly color palate. I wanted every step of the journey to have nice touches that said “we care”.  Of course, there were limitations because it is a government site and had to follow the existing brand standards etc. I believe good UX/ UI should be invisible, unnoticed. The user should just feel that things are looking, working, and feeling as they should.

I then built my designs in Bootstrap, Html & CSS, and JavaScript for hand off to the developers and testing. I am including links to some of the finished portals and images of others.

I did many other things for SHRA including website redesign (in-approval process), Instructional videos and brochures, and landing page designs for their apps and portals.

Here is the Sign up link:  https://portal.shra.us/resident/#/signup

Application Log in:

Resident Dashboard:

Mobile Designs:

Forms: