Shawnee County Realignment

I started working full-time for Shawnee County, Kansas as the webmaster at the end of 2006. What follows is the ongoing realignment of the site from the original.

Original

The following designs show a gradual progression from my coming on board to the completion of the current transition, with the first one being indicative of the original design:

The first order of business was to move to a strict or at least intelligible doctype that would also allow for a more liquid layout (not side-to-side, but discontinuing the use of absolutely-positioned divs, generally, etc.). We were also interested in seeing a more intuitive interface, as well as lighter code, and less use of images as text.

Change 1:

The first solution took fine on the sub-sites. However, some people (relatively few) in the county did not like the home page, because they could not find the email links, etc. It used to be located on the top-left county logo. Others did not like the use of the blue in the background.

Change 2:

This change was still in the middle of the design phase when I was hearing bad reviews about the first change. So I have reneged on some of the work, and gone for the following design, in light of some more feedback from users and more careful consideration of the user interface, i.e. easier access to services without knowing the name of the department that provides them, and less use of jargon.

Change 3:

Change 3 is nearly like the final design that is in use today. The site now makes use of HTML5 and CSS3 as individual features are adopted in most modern browsers (e.g. IE8, FF3, Safari and Chrome).