articulated_truck.hO_cUK0U.svg construction_worker_o2.DROPGidX.svg briefcase.6908ZoEI.svg

Work.Ohio

The entirety of the work.ohio.gov site. This project built upon the Ohio Design System to deliver an informative public website offering job and training opportunity connections to Ohio residents.

Goals

  1. Deliver a working version of work.ohio.gov within 2 months.
  2. Create two novel components to be integrated with the Ohio Design System for use in WorkOhio and beyond.
  3. Configure Contentful CMS for easy content/info updates from the Lt. Governor's office staff.
  4. Integrate the browser location services api to sort opportunities by user location.

Technologies

  • React logoReact 18
  • Contentful logoContentful
  • Cloudinary logoCloudinary
  • Storybook logoStorybook
  • AWS Lambda logoAWS Lambda
  • Scss logoScss

UX Flow

  1. User navigates to Work.Ohio.Gov (no login needed).
  2. Static site contains external resources and links.
  3. Upon visiting a regional one-on-one support page, browser will prompt user for location to optionally re-order resources by proximity.

Details

The site was largely designed through the Contentful CMS platform. This work was performed primarily by non-technical staff wherever possible. My development tasks were focused on custom component design and Contentful integration with design system and the Ohio ID system.

The majority of my efforts were in the development of the Partner Card and Quote Block components (see gallery below ).

Challenges

Aggressive Timeline

From start to finish, this project lasted 2 months. As one of the only two developers on the project, my #1 objective from the start was to ensure that the non-technical team maintained realistic expectations for development tasks, as well as pushing back against feature promises that could be risky to keep.

From a "Hard Skills" perspective this was not a difficult project. React development within a custom library that I was already used to using for the past 8 or 9 months. This project was more acutely a test of my management skills; managing my own pacing but also managing the output of the development side of the project, knowing that my project leads were not well-versed in the processes turning a Figma design into Production feature.

Loose Requirements

The overall design of the site was set pretty early, but content and interactivity details came at a trickle, often deep into development efforts. My management team was under unique pressure since this task came directly from the top of the Executive office of the state, but also most of the requirements were passed through periodic meetings instead of design documents.

I quickly pivoted to a much more flexible and redundant design methodology with my component design, knowing that there were likely going to be last-minute changes up until the final release. This was ultimately the right move, and I'm happy to say that the Lt. Governor ended up loving the final release, and posted about the site on LinkedIn for weeks afterwards.