OVERVIEW
The Executive Branch of the Government of Howard County, Maryland, is situated between the Washington, D.C. corridor and Baltimore. Howard County Government serves as a constituent base of over 300,000 residents and households.
Howard County Website Redesign
CHALLENGES
Howard County is comprised of 31 departments that each maintained and operated their own departmental website using DNN .NET open-source content management system, with over 2,000 pages of content. The County needed a completely new content management system and overhaul of the site, from a new look and feel to a more intuitive navigation. The new site also needed to make and accessibility of information and content more accessible to residents of the County.
SOLUTIONS
Taoti Creative recognized Howard County’s desire to redesign and reorganize its website to provide a more transparent view into county government and improve outreach, communications, and overall engagement with the public.
To accomplish this mission — we needed to take a citizen-centric approach and design with everyone in mind to develop a strategy-focused and task-based user experience.
DESIGN FOR DIVERSE USERS
With a large and varied audience to cater to, Howard County required a website that embraces the diversity of its audiences and creates an unparalleled user experience for all site visitors. To create a user-centric experience, our team conducted a robust discovery process, including rounds of internal stakeholder interviews and surveys to narrow down the specific areas of improvement for the site.
Through the design of the site, we also wanted to energize the look and feel to showcase the diversity and prosperity of the County. Taoti’s design team worked with the County to finalize the brand refresh and color palette.
POWERED BY DRUPAL 9
To bring the entire site together, we built it on the Drupal 9 content management system and provided the County with an integration to the existing ServiceNow platform. Taoti also provides ongoing Drupal CMS maintenance and support and hosting to Howard County as part of this multi-year contract.
