City News and Events

As blogs became more popular on phila.gov over the years, particularly in providing critical and timely information during the peak pandemic years, department partners began pushing the limits of what they were originally designed for to serve the needs of their audience and an effort to increase traffic to their department’s services and information. In the process, they began breaking many of our content and design standards as this space became the notorious Wild West of the website which signaled that it required a refresh.

I was tasked with managing and leading a project between the Content and UX disciplines with development support from Software Engineering to revamp News and Events on Phila.gov to improve the experience for both primary users (residents of the city) and secondary users (department partners in the city government producing the original content). We are able to make this content easier to access by entirely redesigning the News and Events section; more engaging by building a new advanced blog post template with a variety of new components to make more dynamic and visually interesting content; and easier to produce and govern by providing more tools and training to independently develop this critical content which is the pulse of the website.

To achieve these changes, I conducted a thorough discovery process consisting of:

Workshops with the different stakeholders to understand their responsibilities, challenges, and needs:

After reviewing a sample of 100 internal support tickets we received within the Digital Services team, I was able to present this high-level overview along with a detailed report of the salient needs/issues for our partners who develop News and Events content to understand how we could make things easier for them while also easing the burden on those who provide support.

A post workshop synthesis of challenges for the content team which oversees maintenance, training, and governance related to the News and Events space on Phila.gov.

Screenshots from a workshop I conducted with department partners to understand their challenges and needs when producing blog posts.

zeryabsial@gmail.com