The US Tax Court

A responsive redesign of the US Tax Court website focused on improved information architecture, navigation, and visual branding.

About the Project

My Role: UX/UI Designer
Duration: 1 month
Tools: Adobe XD, Miro

This project was completed as part of the Georgia Tech UX/UI Design Bootcamp. The task for this project was to redesign any government website. I elected to redesign the US Tax Court website because I wanted to challenge myself in creating a positive user experience with difficult, unfriendly content. I also wanted the chance to observe users interacting with an older website to see how they navigated through essential tasks. The potential user group for this website is any tax-paying American. My final design focused on improved information architecture, navigation components, and visual branding. The timeline for this project was about 1 month.

Conducting the Research

To begin the redesign, I started by analyzing the user interface of the current website and performing a content audit. I used basic UI heuristics to predict where usability and accessibility issues may arise.

Figure 1. Examples from the UI heuristic evaluation of the US Tax Court website.

Figure 2. Examples of color accessibility issues on the US Tax Court website.

Figure 3. Content audit of the US Tax Court homepage.

This site had many existing issues, including failing AA accessibility standards for color contrast on some of their headings and buttons. The primary navigation contains many options, and at first glance the meanings of the navigation titles were not clear to me. I also noted a lack of white space, small fonts, and inconsistent button styles.

After assessing the site for myself, I started planning for usability testing the website. As part of my testing plan, I created a proto-persona and a UX scenario to give context to my testing tasks. My scenario included a man who was interested in pursuing a case with the U.S. Tax Court and needed to know how to start one. My research questions were:

• Can a user locate the documents necessary to file a petition to start a case with the US Tax Court?

• Can a user find the additional information necessary to pursue their case with the tax court?

Figure 4. Proto persona developed for the UX scenario as part of the usability testing of the current website.

Observing participants doing the tasks I assigned to them revealed many usability problems with the website. Participants complained of too many options in the navigation, text heavy pages, and the size of the text being too small. Additionally, I noted that there was unclear nomenclature of user groups for the site. For example, a user could be an individual pursuing a case, or a tax attorney representing that person. Non-attorney users are referred to as “Taxpayers” on the website, but my participants did not associate themselves with that label, even though they pay taxes. Testing participants were also unable to easily recall how they had gotten to a page they had already visited, emphasizing the lack of context offered by the website navigation and content.

After consolidating my testing insights, I sorted them on a matrix based on what was most important to the agency and what was most important to the users of the site. This exercise helped me visualize what to prioritize moving forward with my redesign.

Figure 5. Matrix sorting the impact of the observed usability problems.

Defining the Problem

Based on the results of the usability testing, the most pressing problem with the US Tax Court Website is a combination of unclear information architecture and confusing navigation. Secondary problems include poor color contrast on some text, small text size, and little use of white space.

Settling on Solutions

My first exercise towards redesigning this website was to perform a card sorting activity. Unfortunately, money and time constraints did not allow for me to recruit participants to card sort and I had to perform the exercise myself. I went through 3-4 iterations of card sorting and generated new navigation categories for the primary and secondary navigation menu.

Figure 6. Results of the card sorting activity for the pages of the US Tax Court Website.    

I then created a site map based on my card sorting activity. The site map below was further iterated on throughout the project, so it does not perfectly match the card sorting results shown above. While creating my new primary navigation of Home, About, Careers, Help, and Contact, I focused on using titles that are common and recognized across all business/agency websites. Because tax law is not common knowledge to the average person, I felt it was imperative that I put the content into a context they could understand. I extended this logic to the secondary navigation, which was much more challenging as that content was more specific to the tax court. One example of this was changing the title for court case information from “Taxpayer Information” to “Citizen & Counsel Information”, with the goal of making it more clear to the general user that they should go to this tab if pursuing a court case. I also consolidated the original navigation options into more general categories like “Rules & Procedures” or “Active Cases”. Finally, I changed the login navigation from a tab labeled “E-Access”, to a typical login button in the primary navigation.

Figure 7. Site map showing the new information architecture.

After developing the new information architecture, I proceeded to design the first iteration of navigation components for both primary and secondary navigation. As part of this step I had to consider the styling of the website, and more specifically choose a color scheme to use for the components. To adhere to the patriotic theme of the original US Tax Court website, I chose shades of blue. I also picked the font PT Sans for the navigation components, as I knew a simple sans-serif font would be appropriate and readable in this context.

Figure 8. Navigation States for US Tax Court Redesign.

Implementing the Ideas

Once the first iteration of the navigation was done, I moved to creating the first wireframes of the homepage. To help me with exploring different layouts, I searched for other government websites that were noted to have a positive user experience. I created a mood board of the websites I found most helpful, which included the US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Energy.

The mood board can be viewed at this [InVision link] ( https://projects.invisionapp.com/boards/EF3YHDSW592/).

After collecting my inspiration, I created multiple versions of a homepage layout, finally settling on the layout, which are shown below.

Figure 9. Version A of the homepage wireframe.

Figure 10. Version B of the homepage wireframe.

To validate my chosen wireframe, I did a simple usability test on the clarity of the layout and UX writing. I referred back to the usability test I had done on the current website, and wrote similar task prompts for this round of testing. Instead of the users completing a full task flow, they were asked to guess where they would find certain information from the homepage. This allowed me to assess if the new navigation structure and titles were understandable in the context of the UX scenario I designed.

Users were asked the following questions:

Task 1: You need to start a case with the US tax court. Where would you go to find this?

Task 2: You’ve found out that you can create an account on the tax court website and submit your petition online. Where would you go to create your account?

Task 3: Fast forward. You petitioned to start your case a couple weeks ago and got a docket number. You want to look up when your trial is scheduled for and where. Where would you go to look for this?

Task 4: You have a question about one of the forms you need to fill out. Where do you think you would find this information?

Task 5: You suspect something may have gone wrong with your petition and you want to contact the court to find out more. Where would you go to do this?

I tested one set of users on the desktop version of the homepage and another set on the mobile version of the homepage, to ensure that the layout carried over to mobile devices well. The testing results were positive, in that all participants correctly guessed all the answers. The only point of confusion was if new accounts should be created through the Login button.

Branding & Style

When considering how to brand this website I referred to the mood board I used for layout inspiration. Government agencies often use blue color schemes with accents of other colors, which I followed in my design. I also choose to redesign the header of the page with the US Tax Court crest, similar to how the US Treasury Department styles their header.

I chose a clean serif font for titles, as I think serif fonts communicate authority. I stuck with the PT Sans font for navigation and body text because it is simple and readable. I made sure to increase the font size on body text and titles compared to the current website, as that was a main complaint of users in usability testing. I added sidebar navigation for the pages with complex content to help the user orient themselves, and I maintained the use of breadcrumbs on all pages.

Figure 11. Style Guide for this US Tax Court website redesign.

I then added my style and branding to my prototypes to demonstrate what the final product would look like.

Figure 12. Mockup of the US Tax Court homepage.

Figure 13. Examples of other pages in the US Tax Court redesign.

Figure 14. Examples of the mobile prototype with navigation shown.

Future Steps & Lessons Learned

If I were to have more time on this project, I would want to get in contact with someone at the US Tax Court and with a tax attorney. It was challenging for me to fully understand the court’s rules, proceedings, and goals from reading their website. I had to make many assumptions about how someone would use the site, what circumstance they might be in, and what the court would expect of them during a court case. I am also unsure as to how much an attorney would use or rely on this website. I did my best to research tax court cases, but an expert opinion would be invaluable to the quality of the final product.

The greatest lesson I took away from this project is how to work with technical, jargon-filled content when designing a website. There is a difficult balance to hit between accurately communicating technical ideas and using language that the general user can understand. I think this was a great project for me to practice that skill. My only wish is that I had the chance to test the new design in the real world!