CivicActions, along with our partner Fearless, facilitated Drupal 10 upgrades across the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) suite of websites, bringing improvements for editors, better security and accessibility, and community contributions to streamline upgrades for large- scale Drupal. The new Claro administration theme is cleaner, clearer, and more accessible.

The new rich text editor CKEditor 5 provides many UI enhancements and an improved user experience. The most significant change from previous versions of CKEditor is that editors must now use a predefined set of elements to configure the content, which leads to fewer instances of invalid markup patterns making their way into the published site. Since invalid or non-semantic markup is often the cause of accessibility issues, this is a major upgrade. In addition, the improved Layout Builder experience makes it easier for content editors to control more complex layouts, while still keeping consistent with CMS Design System standards.

The 8 sites included in the upgrade, which occurred ahead of schedule, were: CMS.gov; Medicare.gov; Openpaymentsdata.cms.gov; Data.medicaid.gov; Data.healthcare.gov; SDIS.medicaid.gov (internal CMS site); PFS.data.cms.gov (internal CMS site); QIC.cms.gov (internal CMS site); and Provider Data Catalog (data.cms.gov/provider-data).

The challenge

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) help millions of people every year find and enroll in health care programs. Planning a large-scale web and content management project to improve the customer experience of their multiple websites, the agency launched a design challenge for the vendors that were finalists for the contract.

We did a fast-paced collaboration with our partners Fearless and KPMG to submit deliverables in just 8 business days (including page designs, content recommendations, an API, and a clickable prototype with a smart chatbot). Our team won the challenge because the agency saw we could help them achieve their goal to better serve Medicare beneficiaries.

Client goal

The task was to redesign the Medicare Part D section of the medicare.gov website, which helps people understand insurance options for their medication needs. For all their digital platforms, CMS needs to:

• Meet public expectation for easily navigable online services
• Securely manage personal info and transactions for millions of beneficiaries
• Provide friendly online experience for people facing stressful health situations
• Serve diverse groups of users with competing wants and priorities
• Support agency staff in publishing clear and accurate public-facing content

Our approach

Within the time constraint for this compressed agile design sprint, we conducted lean versions of the activities we would normally do to make sure the site was effective for Medicare recipients. Daily collaboration among all team members, from Design to DevOps to Developers, allowed us to quickly test and iterate on every step.

We used Drupal as our preferred open source platform and the CMS design system, which builds on the U.S. Web Design System. Together, these tools provide a solid foundation for accessible government websites — a key goal for agencies like CMS that serve diverse and aging populations.

Human Centered Design played a critical role in our process of building a site that would be intuitive and useful to older Americans seeking information about their drug coverage options.

Understand the needs

We talked to real Medicare beneficiaries to understand the challenges they faced in navigating the site. Based on what they said, we created a key persona to drive our scenario-based approach — ensuring that our work solved real problems and created value for users. We also evaluated the existing site to see how well it met standards for usability.

Offer customized guidance

To help visitors feel comfortable navigating complex information about benefits coverage, we created several experience options for them to choose from. They could explore the site on their own, use the guidance wizard, or ask questions of the interactive chat bot. We also improved the Search function to deliver more relevant results.

Clear the path to success

We focused on removing obstacles to help more people successfully find the information they needed. This was done through intuitive navigation and labels, scannable and actionable content, and a refreshed, accessible design. We tested our solutions with users and iterated based on their feedback.

The challenge

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to “promote the progress of science” and “advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare." With a 2021 budget of $8.5 billion, NSF accounts for over 25 percent of the total research funds awarded at U.S. colleges and universities.

CivicActions was tasked with rebuilding the entire public-facing NSF website, including implementation of all new visuals and improvement of the information architecture. By collaborating closely with stakeholders across NSF and adopting a rapid-iteration MVP approach, we regularly released prioritized features while simultaneously building the back-end infrastructure to power the ongoing full-scale migration.

Client goal

To better serve employees and the scientific community — including researchers in mathematics, computer science, social sciences, and beyond — NSF needed to replace the existing NSF.gov with a modern, flexible, cloud-hosted online experience. Primary goals were to:

• Modernize and improve the user experience for nsf.gov
• Improve funding search for colleges, researchers, and scientists
• Empower NSF staff with a new Content Management System (CMS)
• Leverage user research and testing throughout the project

Our approach

To support timelines for a public launch, we took an “MVP approach” by launching a beta site with a small, prioritized set of functionalities. As new pages and features are built, the site continues to develop over time, in the open. This approach requires rapid prototyping and iteration, frequent testing, and continuous engagement with stakeholders.

Start by understanding the needs

After some initial design discovery, NSF engaged CivicActions in September of 2018 to begin a site-wide redesign and migration. The legacy NSF.gov site — built mostly in static HTML — was hard to manage and laborious to update. We knew a scalable, flexible CMS solution was needed, so we got right to work on development and design — starting the site infrastructure, building the initial set of components, and kicking off design research.

Identifying “top tasks” of various user groups helps us solve the right problems for people.

Deliver fast and improve continually

By the spring of 2019, we’d launched beta.nsf.gov and established an iterative, MVP-based approach that allowed our design and development team to release and test content with static data while continuing to build out the site infrastructure. Later that year, we released an updated Careers portal on https://beta.nsf.gov/careers, and began research on the Funding portal and the Funding Search feature.

Improve organizational processes

Working closely with NSF stakeholders, we continued to steadily test and release features, launching the Science Matters blog and an updated top level menu in February 2020. By the fall, we integrated the Pims Rest API to streamline NSF’s online program management, and deployed the Drupal Layout Builder tool that allows content editors to drag and drop content as they build and publish pages.

Partnership for public good

In 2021, after extensive research, testing and iteration, the updated Funding Search Portal will be launched in June — creating a simpler, quicker way to fund the research that powers the U.S. scientific community. Additionally that year, CivicActions was awarded a $44 million contract extension to continue supporting this important work. As we look to the future with a growing team and ambitious goals, we are grateful for our ongoing partnership with NSF.