_posts/2016-03-16-making-the-draft-web-design-standards-better-through-feedback.md
---
title: "Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards better through your feedback"
date: 2016-03-16
authors:
- carolyn
- melody
tags:
- web design system
- best practices
- user-centered design
- design
excerpt: "Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community."
description: "Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. In addition, user research done by the Federal Front Door team has produced some interesting finding for the team."
image: /assets/blog/web-design-standards/home.png
---
Since [our
launch](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/28/web-design-standards/) of the
Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have
provided feedback on the project through [GitHub
issues](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues) and via
email. We’ve received dozens of [feature
requests](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22feature+request%22)
as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.
Over the past five months, we’ve incorporated suggestions from the
feedback we’ve received, resolved a number of outstanding issues, and
made [various
updates](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.8.3)
to our content and structure. We’ve also thought about topics like
accessibility, content strategy, and user-centered design — particularly
as it relates to users of government websites.
Much of our work has come out of the [user
research](https://labs.usa.gov/) conducted by our team and our
colleagues on the Federal Front Door Team, who set out to better
understand how the general public feels about and interacts with the
federal government, so that we can design and build products that
improve people’s experience across government agencies. Among their
findings:
- People aren’t always able to differentiate between a government website and a website from the private sector. They use clues like domain names, official government logos, and trust-building language such as “this is an official government website” to evaluate the trustworthiness of a website.
- People sometimes have trouble with choice overload: when government websites give them too many choices or don’t explain the consequences of a certain choice.
- The general public wants to be able to “see” the process when interacting with federal agencies and programs. This includes knowing when their information has been received and reviewed, and overall clarity into why the process takes as long as it does.
Not all of these issues can be addressed with [common UI
elements](https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/) from the Draft
Standards, but they can be a start. Implementing consistent design
patterns, such as colors and button styles, make it visually obvious
that users are on a government website. And when interactions and forms
start to look and feel the same, it lowers the mental energy required to
complete them, especially when they are across multiple sites and
agencies. In this way design patterns can simplify and clarify the
consequences of making important choices.
For federal employees, standards and guidance on creating forms,
communicating application status, and explaining processes can improve
the quality of government services, while freeing up staff time to spend
on more-expensive channels like call centers.
The Draft Standards in action
-----------------------------
We’re excited to see government web administrators begin to use the
Draft Standards on their sites. From [vets.gov](https://www.vets.gov/)
to [usa.gov](https://www.usa.gov/), we’ve seen over a dozen examples
of websites using components from the Draft Standards on their sites.
In the coming days, we’ll be answering some frequently asked questions
about the Draft Standards and detailing what we’ve learned and where we
hope to go next.
As always, if you have additional questions or are thinking about
similar topics, open [an issue on
GitHub](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues) or email us
directly at
[uswebdesignstandards@gsa.gov](mailto:uswebdesignstandards@gsa.gov).
You can also contribute code and content to the project [on
GitHub](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards).
*This week, we released [an
update](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.9.0) to the Draft Standards website and upgraded the Draft Standards
themselves. This version introduces several backwards-incompatibility
changes that will affect usage of the Draft Standards. You can read
[the release
notes](https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards/releases/tag/v0.9.0).
Also, we now have a standardized way to keep up to date with our
standards through [the npm
package](https://www.npmjs.com/package/uswds) for the Draft
Standards.*