Anthro-Tech Wins Four Davey Awards for Multiple Website Redesigns

Anthro-Tech is the winner of four Davey Awards for our human-centered website redesign projects with two different state agencies, in partnership with WaTech. Both projects involved UX Research, UX Design, Content Strategy, Digital Accessibility, and Organizational Change Management.

Our project, “Improving Voters’ Access to Financial Disclosure Data" for The Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) won two Davey Awards for:

• Website Features - Best User Experience for Websites
• Website Features - Best Data Visualization for Websites

Our project, “Using the Human-Centered Design Approach to Redesign a Government Website” for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) won two Davey Awards for:

• Website Features - Best Use of Navigation for Websites
• Website Features - Website Redesign for Websites

The Davey Awards are the largest and most prestigious awards competition exclusively for the “Davids” (i.e. David and Goliath) of creativity. It is an international award focused on honoring outstanding creative work from the best small agencies from across the world. The 18th Annual Davey Awards received over 2,000 entries from ad agencies, digital agencies, production firms, in-house creative professionals, graphic designers, design firms, and public relations firms.

Winning Project: Washington State PDC Website Redesign

We worked with PDC to:

• Interview stakeholders and conduct a survey to understand the target audiences for the website and business goals for the redesign
• Conduct a baseline usability study to inform areas of focus and to establish metrics
• Use an iterative design approach to improve the website design based on the results of testing and accessibility analysis
• Update their website’s navigation to be more intuitive to customers’ needs through surfacing more information on the homepage, making the labels more descriptive, and including the option of navigating by audience group
• Plain talk content and reduce industry jargon, to make it easier for customers to understand information
• Simplify the way data is displayed by providing more guidance around what information is available, where to go for what, and how to pull out information that is meaningful and interesting to the customer

The new digital solution is an enhancement over a once frustrating and burdensome experience. Customers can seamlessly navigate the website, understand the content, and pull data sets effectively, all on an accessible and mobile-friendly platform.

Winning Project: WSDOT Website Redesign

We partnered with WSDOT to redesign their website with improved user-centered information architecture, content strategy, and accessible responsive design. We used a Human-Centered Design strategy of discovery and research, design and development, evaluation and iteration, and finally, launching the website.

We worked with WSDOT to:

• Identify their primary customers
• Research what their audience needs to accomplish when they visit the WSDOT website
• Ensure primary customers can successfully find and understand information
• Make the website accessible on any device
• Decrease the overwhelming amount of content and pages to reduce confusion from outdated information
• Create a governance structure with associated training to better position the content editors to work together to create and maintain content based on user personas and data

The result is a complete overhaul of the design of the site, a reduction of content from 14,000 pages to less than 2,000, and clear content layout.

The new digital product is useful, usable, and accessible on any device, and users can find the important travel information they need quickly and efficiently without frustration.