Summary
We helped the Ninth Circuit Court of Florida create an information system that’s simple to maintain and easy for users to find what they're looking for on any screen size.
Services
Information architecture, Responsive design, Drupal development
Have an idea in mind? We’d love to hear about it.
Stephan Barrett
Founder, CEO
The outcome
Immediately after launch there was a large, positive response throughout the Ninth Circuit and with local residents. Early numbers showed a dramatic drop in bounce rate—the number of users leaving the site after they hit the first page. And internal website managers praised their ability to maintain the information on the site easily and effectively.
35%
decrease in people leaving the site after they visit only one page
50%
reduction in website maintenance time
25%
reduction in call volume to the courthouse
Making administration easy
Many screens of content on this site are long, with pages spanning several layers of information. Oftentimes, several pages reused content that appeared elsewhere.
To make this simple to administrate, we used the Drupal node system to create screen sections, then pulled them together to build a complete screen. That means reordering content is simple, and adding the same content to multiple screens is now easy. All the Ninth Circuit team has to do is update content in one place to update it sitewide.
History
Design
Orange County's court facilities have been overwhelmed by the exploding area growth and the concurrent growth in demand for judicial services. The resulting overcrowding and dispersion of court-related agencies have seriously hindered the efficiency, security, and integrity of the courts. In an attempt to address these and other concerns, a courthouse facility was opened in 1997 to accommodate Orange County's current and future judicial needs.
Parking
We introduced a dynamic content management system to help their team avoid the content sprawl.
Card based design
Dealing with many types and large amounts of information is a challenge. To increase focus, we used a simple card design system to separate content into individual blocks.
Design Workshops are a great way to map the digital experience with the client so we can identify opportunities and challenges at the beginning of a project. Here, Stephan Barrett is facilitating a group activity to centered around the information architecture.
The challenge
The Ninth Judicial Circuit Court is located in the heart of Central Florida and is one of 20 judicial circuits in the state. Serving Orange and Osceola counties, the Ninth Circuit covers over 2,000 square miles and serves more than 1.3 million residents, making it one of the largest circuits in Florida.
Recently, their website started showing signs of age. It had become difficult to update due to a lack of a strong information system, and a steady rise in mobile user traffic demanded a renewed experience for small screens.
Mobile sessions on ninthcircuit.org became impossible to ignoreOur mission was to make website maintenance easier and to allow users to find the information they were looking for as quickly as possible.
To get our hands around this site, we started by reviewing over 600 unique pages of content. Next, we performed a card sorting session to reorganize content based on the Ninth Circuit’s experience with their users and the feedback they’d received.
In the end, we moved toward more intent-focused categories of information to help users identify where to go to get the information they needed.