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This wiki is home to planning and roadmap documents for the 18F website.

Key documents

• Design work and interaction with partners is guided by experience principles.
• We store research materials in the research branch, organized by sprint name.
• For editorial style, we follow the 18F Content Guide.
• Our project hypotheses document what we're doing, and why.
• What we would like to do someday is a list of possibilities, hopes, and dreams that aren't quite tasks yet.
• To contribute to the site, see our contributing guidelines.
• Helpful thread on analytics

Core hypotheses / current work

Up next

• Telling users what to expect when they contact us
  ...will make the business development process smoother

Recent work

• Changing "Hire 18F" to "Contact" (release 1.2.0)
  ...will make the pathway clearer for potential partners, and reduce confusion
  • The Hire and Join sections are confusingly named
  • We also redesigned this page to feel more like a call to action and offer alternate contact info for media and general inquiries
• Moving "Joining 18F" content into the site (release 1.2.0)
  ...will reduce confusion for potential applicants and reduce the number of users who hit a dead end looking for open positions
  • It's now clearer when we don't have open positions
  • This content has also been revised and updated for voice, tone, and accuracy
• Improving the "what we deliver" page (release 1.2.0)
  ...will help partners understand what we do by directing them to project pages
• Creating an "About 18F" page (release 1.1.8)
  ...will help build trust with federal parters by clarifying who we are and how we work
  • Create an "about" page to clarify what 18F is and our relationship to GSA
  • This page also includes a For press section, which allowed us to retire the outdated /press page
• Improving the project page layout (release 1.1.8)
  ...will help users understand quickly that these are examples of past projects, as well as offering better metadata and clearer calls to action
  • Write plain-language summaries of past projects and make them easy to find
  • Add metadata column to hold quote, links, resources, and lists of partner agencies; explicit CTA at bottom of the page; 3 featured blog posts; smaller image, to be more tolerant of lower-quality images
  • Initial project pages were in release KuriousKettle
• Reorganizing the homepage (release 1.1.5)
  ...will make it quicker for users to understand who we are
  • Say who we are first, and feature several projects instead of one
  • Clarify the call to action: invite users to contact us with inquiries
  • Testing in this round of research
• Introducing new categories of projects (introduced on the homepage in release 1.1.5)
  ...will help partners understand what we do
  • Based on Outreach/Comms research
  • Testing in this round of research
• Revised "Hire 18F" content (pull request)
  ...will help people feel confident reaching out to us for potential work
  • Clarify the intake process and tell people what to expect after emailing 18F
  • Preliminary research results