City of Bloomington Website Redesign
Full-site redesign reorganizing municipal content around resident tasks, not departmental ownership.
The problem
Bloomington’s website ran on a decade-old in-house CMS. Departments duplicated pages to stay visible in their sections. Content was managed by single designees in each office—if that person left, everything broke. The city needed a resilient stack that integrated with their open-source municipal tools, but had no real budget and a small IT team already stretched thin.
What I did
I owned design and service outcomes end-to-end: research, information architecture, interface system, and content restructuring.
Research in the open. We ran alpha testing through public pilots. To reach residents who wouldn’t attend public meetings, we printed site sections and ran voting exercises in a local supermarket—testing comprehension, navigation, and language with people doing their grocery shopping.
Reorganized around tasks, not departments. I redesigned the IA from the ground up, structuring content around what residents needed to do rather than which office handled it. This simplified content, eliminated duplication, and created governance that city staff could maintain without reintroducing fragmentation.
Coordinated tightly with implementation. Design decisions were made alongside development to ensure accessibility, clarity, and durability with limited resources.
Outcomes
- Exit rates decreased 11%
- Bounce rate decreased 93%
- Mobile usage exceeded 50% of traffic
- 2018 Best of Indiana Award for Best Application Serving the Public
- Featured at DrupalCon Nashville 2018
What this demonstrates
I can lead municipal digital transformation with constrained resources. Successful government websites require information architecture that reflects how residents think—and governance structures staff can sustain.