CMS (Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services) has requested a new look for its current CMS Cloud website. Deliverables would include a new website design and a new branding kit (consisting of a logo, branding guidelines, and branding assets).
For this project, I worked on a team including another product designer, technical writers, and developers. My responsibilities included creating the new brand logo and guidelines, conducting user testing on the infrastructure of the new website design, and designing website pages and assets.
KICKOFF (LOGO + BRANDING GUIDES)
To start with the rebranding of CMS Cloud we went through a naming workshop with the team at CMS, conducted in the form of an affinity diagram. After a few rounds of discussion and voting, we had decided on the name "CMS Hybrid Cloud Hosting Services".
After we had a new name for the cloud service, I started sketching out different concepts for the cloud logo and created our first round of designs, which I then presented to stakeholders in a slide deck. After this we had them vote on logo concepts and give feedback in a survey which I used to refine our first designs. The selection process took two rounds of designs before we settled on the final logo design.
After the logo was packaged for final delivery, I started on the branding guidelines. Inspiration was taken from the original CMS branding guidelines to make sure that the logo and assets were being used in accordance to the parent brand's standards as well as staying true to Hybrid Cloud's new identity. The guidelines contained the following; Brand Mission & Vision, Brand Architecture, Logo Usage, Colors and Codes, Typography, Visual Accents, Iconography, Voice & Tone, Grammar and Mechanics, Media Usage, and Accessibility.
KICKOFF #2 (WEBSITE)
As well as a new identity, CMS requested our team to build a website based on the information on the current site. Their pain points consisted of difficulty finding information, information not being up to date, and the website being overall difficult to navigate for users who are not familiar with the site or everything that CMS Hybrid Cloud has to offer.
To start, our team put together a bird's eye view of the current infrastructure of the CMS Cloud website.
After this, our team worked through a content audit and new infrastructure for the new site. We then conducted user studies to determine pain points with the current design. Throughout creating the new infrastructure,, we worked closely with the CMS team to ensure that we were solving the main pain points in navigation with this new design.
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Our team went through several rounds of website designs, working closely with CMS to create a product that best reflected their vision. After the final design is approved by CMS, our team then began the next steps towards development. Working closely with our team of developers, we conducted another user test to determine if our designs showed significant improvement in solving user contentions with the current site.
USABILITY TESTING
There were a total of 5 users that participated in the testing; 4 ADOs and 1 IUSG Advisor. During this study, each user was asked to perform a series of tasks using 3 separate user flows. Users were assessed on their ability to use the site successfully to complete the tasks, as well as their satisfaction or attitude towards the design of the Hybrid Cloud website.
KEY FINDINGS
HIGH-LEVEL RECCOMENDATIONS
USABILITY TESTING CONCLUSION
This study provided valuable insights into user interations and perceptions of the new website. Issues with the news, Support, and Learning Center were highlighted. Reorganization of content and redesign of page are being inmplented to address these areas of improvement. Test participants also appreciated improvement in visual design and how much more intuitive the website felt when compared to its pevious state. While to quantitative results show that the website ranks above average with its SEQ and SUS scores, it is important to note that these results are not statistically significant due to the low sample size. However in our case, this test was run as a rough analysis of the new Hybrid Cloud website.
