Forest Service Business Operations
Unifying Eleven Forest Service Offices Into One Digital Experience
ROLE
Sole UI/UX Designer
YEARS
2022-2025
The USFS Business Operations website served as a critical resource for internal employees across multiple departments, but its content was fragmented across HTML pages, SharePoint sites, and disconnected tools. The project focused on creating a centralized experience that simplified access to information, improved usability, and established a scalable framework for future growth.
As the only UX Designer on the team, I worked alongside stakeholders, developers, a Business Analyst, and a Scrum Master to redesign the experience, create a new information architecture, and develop a design system that could support eleven distinct offices under a single digital ecosystem.
THE PROBLEM
Supporting Multiple Offices Through One Unified Platform
THE SOLUTION
Creating a Centralized Hub for Forest Service Employee
The solution centered on designing a single entry point that could connect employees to the information, resources, and services they needed regardless of office affiliation.
A new information architecture, consistent navigation framework, and reusable design patterns helped consolidate content while still allowing individual offices to maintain their own identity and functionality. The final experience provided employees with a more intuitive way to discover information and complete tasks without relying on institutional knowledge.
BACKGROUND
Supporting the Operational Backbone of the Forest Service
Business Operations serves as a shared services organization within the Forest Service, supporting employees across multiple departments and administrative functions.
Because employees relied on these resources for daily work, the website needed to do more than provide information. It needed to become a dependable destination that could help users navigate organizational processes, discover office-specific resources, and complete routine tasks independently.
RESEARCH
Understanding Employee Workflows and Stakeholder Needs
Research focused on understanding how employees currently accessed information and where friction existed within the existing ecosystem.
Stakeholder sessions revealed a shared goal: create a centralized website that employees could rely on as their primary destination for information, resources, and services. A review of existing content uncovered significant duplication and inconsistent organization. These findings reinforced the need for a clear content strategy and scalable navigation model.
Key Insights from Stakeholder Sessions
-
Employees struggled to determine where information lived.
-
Similar resources were often duplicated across multiple platforms.
-
New employees faced a steep learning curve when navigating internal systems.
-
Stakeholders needed a structure capable of supporting future office growth.
IDEATION
Establishing a Scalable Information Architecture
The ideation phase focused on translating stakeholder needs and content requirements into possible site structures.
Information Architecture
As a result of the IA being created, stakeholders were able to strategize an approach for how to phase out each launch for this new website. The goal was to start with the parent/main website and one office, Chief Information Office, as this was their biggest and most used website. After this first launch we then would work with each other office one by one until they all have launched a new website.
One of the largest challenges was determining how thousands of pages and resources should be organized across eleven offices.
The strategy as workshopped and approved by stakeholders positioned Business Operations as the primary entry point while guiding users toward office-specific content through clear pathways and consistent navigation patterns. This approach balanced organizational complexity with user simplicity, creating a framework that could evolve over time
DESIGN
Designing a Flexible Experience for Multiple Offices
With the information architecture approved, design efforts focused on creating layouts and components that could scale across different office needs. The designs were focused specifically on the first launch, meaning we needed to nail down how the landing page and Chief Information Office should look and flow from one to another.
High-fidelity concepts were used to explore homepage structures and navigation systems. Low-fidelity was skipped over as it was much quicker to add realistic-but-fake content into the stock USWDS components to create high-fidelity designs.
The components used in these designs were made with the intention of reusability across multiple offices. The approach was to have a specific layout for the main office webpage, and a separate layout to be used by the sub-offices. This would increase familiarity across the website as a whole and increase the ease of content discoverability for all users due to the similarities in navigation.
TESTING & ITERATIONS
Refining the Experience Through Collaboration
Prototypes were reviewed continuously with developers to validate both usability and technical feasibility. Meetings with stakeholders were conducted by me in a more presentation format where I would create an interactive prototype that would walk through a workflow step by step to show how a user would interact with their product.
Both of these methods helped keep everyone on the same page with how the design should look/work in the final product.
Oftentimes I would give these prototype links to the stakeholders to review on their own post-meeting so they would have the chance to get a hands-on feel for the product. This frequently produced additional feedback that was incorporated into the design.
One of the most significant milestones involved presenting the proposed experience to Forest Service leadership and representatives from every office participating in the project. This was a very large call of over 200 people, so I had to be sure to be punctual and communicate clearly. By focusing discussions on navigation structure, user value, and organizational impact, the team secured approval from a large stakeholder group while maintaining momentum toward launch.
RESULTS
Launching a Platform Built for Long-Term Growth
The Business Operations website launched in January 2023 and continued expanding over the following two years as additional offices were integrated into the platform.
The flexible design framework allowed new offices to be onboarded efficiently while maintaining a consistent user experience. Some offices required simple informational pages, while others introduced complex workflows and third-party integrations.
Highlights from the Sub-Office Site Launches
-
The reusable component concept paid off heavily as we were able to launch 7 more office websites using just those components with no custom development required.
-
One office transferred their whole legacy training system from an old HTML program into our platform.
-
This was a massive effort that included transferring content for over 300 subjects and all their history from the last 20 years.
-
We also created an internal portal that managed all ongoing/upcoming/previous classes. This included interfaces for students, trainers, and admins who all had their own workflows surrounding classes.
-
FINAL THOUGHTS
Balancing Consistency and Flexibility
What I Learned: This project reinforced the importance of information architecture as a foundation for large-scale digital experiences. When multiple departments share a platform, thoughtful content organization becomes critical to usability and long-term sustainability.
What I'm Most Proud Of: I'm most proud of helping create a framework that successfully supported years of growth after the initial launch. Designing for eleven offices with different priorities required balancing consistency and flexibility, and the resulting platform provided a foundation that could continue evolving as organizational needs changed.