Dept. of the Treasury Websites
A Series of Projects to Improve Usability and Accessibility
Alexander & Tom, Inc. has worked with the U.S. Treasury for the last 5 years. We were brought in to help with a wide variety of 'Web Services'. We work with The Bureau of Public Debt's Office of Public and Legislative Affairs, and their web team to perform website design and development, usability testing, content development, outreach campaigns and other interactive marketing strategies.
In the first year of the contract, we completed the development and usability testing of two new sites – one for the Bureau of Public Debt (www.publicdebt.treas.gov), and one for ARC, The Administrative Resource Center – their franchise services division (https://arc.publicdebt.treas.gov/). Both sites are live and can be visited on the web.
The ARC site was created for the Government-to-Government franchise services of the Bureau of Public Debt. It is a government agency, but sells its services to other government agencies (services such as, payroll, accounting, information systems, and travel.)
We also developed and conducted usability testing on the main site of the Bureau of Public Debt (www.publicdebt.treas.gov). This site is designed to position the Bureau as an innovative, friendly, open and easy to approach organization. The site design has performed very well with users in formal usability testing. It is often described by the participants as “very friendly," “easy-to-use” and “easy-to-understand”. In addition, the site is Section 508 compliant, and written to plain language standards.
The Bureau of Public Debt site was put through extensive “Usability Testing” – where we assigned typical tasks to a group of participants and then tracked their ability to accomplish those tasks, using the information and tools on the site. The testing procedures were designed to identify errors and issues with the design and content of the site before its official launch.
Testing included:
- Eye-tracking analysis
- Screen activity recording
- Heat mapping
- Moderators
- Tow-way mirrors
- Video Recording
Finally, we provided testing, analysis and redesign of Treasury’s main commerce site – Treasury Direct (www.treasurydirect.gov). This is the main site for anyone wishing to buy U.S. Treasury Bills, Bonds or Notes. This can include Investment Firms from Wall Street purchasing $100 million in 10 year Treasury Bills or it can include your neighbor buying a $50 savings bond for a birthday present.
We conducted Discovery Meetings with their staff and key stakeholders to get a basic sense of the needs of the various audience groups. We then performed a “Best of Breed” review of private industry investment sites; such as Fidelity Investments, Scottrade, E-Trade and Charles Schwab. We also performed a “Best of Breed” review of government websites. We worked directly with the Office of Public and Legislative Affairs, who helped us gather consumer feedback from the existing site and account systems. We reviewed thousands of consumer feedback forms from the website, where consumers were either complaining about features and functions of the site, or praising the site for its ease-of-use. With the combined information from all of these sources we created design prototypes.
The new design was created to support the existing Treasury Direct brand (which has the bright colors you see here), and clearly separate the information for the top three audiences (individuals, government entities, and large investment institutions). Special attention was paid to bring all of the login and account creation information to the top of the site, to align its user experience with other industry leading financial websites. Additionally, a large portion of the site copy was rewritten by plain language experts, to make the site easier to understand and easier to use for a variety of audiences.
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