Texas school districts experience many friction points when ordering instructional materials. The complex, multi-step process requires busy school administrators and coordinators to interact with outdated technology and legacy systems.

Users of these systems often look to the the Texas Education Agency (TEA) website for instructions and information. Unfortunately, much of the content is poorly organized, written in “government speak” that is difficult to understand, and not designed with a user-centered approach. Site visitors struggle to find what they need and instead inundate TEA with emails and help desk inquiries.

The TEA Instructional Materials and Implementation team asked for help in addressing these problems. We embarked on a complete redevelopment of their departmental pages with a user-centered approach. We had a lean team to get this done, including one designer and no developer. We also were limited to changing only on a small set of pages, which represent a small corner of the agency’s sprawling website. This added an extra challenge to the project, as we would have to stay within established constraints while redesigning this isolated set of interdependent pages.

In close collaboration with subject matter experts, I led the team in developing user personas to guide the strategy; identified which user pain points we could address within the structural and functional limitations of the larger TEA website; remapped the content to a completely new page structure based on newly identified user journey pathways; and revised all content in plain language and with improved accessibility. Throughout the process, I set up various project trackers to keep tasks and deliverables on track.