Usability

Resources on Usability

Usability Testing with Steve Krug —Get started making usability fixes to your website or product.
18F Methods —A collection of tools that describe how teams can put human-centered design into practice.
Usability Starter Kit —Here are some tools and templates to help you create better user experiences.
Fueleconomy.gov – Extended Case Study —Like any valid business decision, User Experience work should produce results and demonstrable impact. To see a list of screenshots from …
Government Usability Case Studies —This list of government usability case studies shows how government sites, mobile apps and other products become more effective, more …

Join a Community of Practice

Web Analytics and Optimization —Brings together government analytics practitioners to make better decisions using web analytics and other optimization strategies.

News and Events on Usability

56 posts

DHS Usability Testing Kit

Usability testing is a way to learn how easy or difficult it is for people to use something by observing them actually using it. The resources provided in this kit can help you systematize the process, produce reliable findings, and generally expand your ability to test service materials (i.e., paper and digital forms, mobile applications, web pages, etc.) thoroughly with real users — before you launch them out into the world.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Jun 13, 2022

USWDS

Webinar Recap: U.S. Web Design System October 2021 Monthly Call

In this recap of the October 2021 U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) Monthly Call, the USWDS team shares how their community can help teams solve problems together, and what tools and channels we can use to ask questions, get answers, and provide useful feedback.

Dan Williams

Kathryn Mullan

Nov 15, 2021

USWDS

Webinar Recap: U.S. Web Design System September 2021 Monthly Call

For our September call, we focused on the future of the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS): Where does the design system go from USWDS 2.0? What did we learn from our 1.0 and 2.0 releases? Read key points and takeaways from this month’s presentation.

Kathryn Mullan

Nov 05, 2021

User Experience

Building a Bureau-Wide Usability Collaboration Group: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Geological Survey

Learn about the U.S. Geological Survey’s Usability Collaboration Area in this short interview with the group’s organizer.

Holly Chandler

Sep 01, 2021

Research

Involving End Users at All Stages To Create Actionable Science Products for Complex, Real-World Issues

How co-production methods increase the usefulness of scientific results, products, and tools

Holly Chandler

Aug 13, 2021

User Experience

A User-Centered Approach: Simplicity and Complexity in a Homepage Graphic

A User-Centered Approach: Simplicity and Complexity in a Homepage Graphic—UX interns go through the redesign and testing process of a homepage graphic to communicate the scope the site.

Aug 12, 2021

A/B Testing

How To Navigate Challenges to Successfully A/B Test Your Emails

The article will go over some best practices of implementing A/B testing on your emails.

Jenn Wingerberg

May 21, 2021

User Experience

How Testing Your Documents Can Improve Plain Language Compliance

Usability testing isn’t only for websites. Come work with Dr. Ginny Redish and try out three techniques for quick and easy ways to test the usability of your documents.

Ginny Redish

Katherine Spivey

Apr 14, 2021

USPS

Customer Experience & Continuous Improvement: The USPS Digital Approach

This presentation lays out USPS.com’s continuous improvement approach and how it combines analytics and customer feedback with iterative heuristic reviews, design, and usability testing to monitor, improve, and evolve the USPS.com CX.

Jeff Pass

Alexander Turgeon

Matt Petrowski

Nov 12, 2020