Children, Youth and Families
MN Department of Children, Youth and Families
The Department of Children, Youth and Families (“DCYF”) is the newest department within the state of Minnesota.
The primary audience for the department are families, and those who work with them, asking for coordination, engagement, and culturally and individually responsive programs that meet their children’s needs throughout their development. This includes child care providers, early childhood education groups, nonprofits, and any relevant organization who works with families and children in the state of Minnesota.
Electric Citizen was selected to lead the redesign, based on our long history of successful website projects and focus on working with government clients.
The first challenge was coordination.
DCYF is a consolidation of approximately 175 individual programs and services spread out of across multiple state departments and divisions, brought together under one new organization. This meant bringing together numerous programs, content, editors, audiences and goals.
The second challenge was around design and branding.
While part of the overall branding for the state of Minnesota, this was a department starting from scratch. DCYF had no existing website or other marketing materials to use as the basis for their new site and online brand.
The third challenge was timing.
As many details and decisions came together in late 2023 around mission, staffing, leadership and content, it was clear a new website would be needed as the public face for the department. And it had to come together quickly–the new department was scheduled for a public unveiling on July 1st, 2024.
This meant the website needed to be planned, designed, built and launched in less than 6 months.
To begin the project, we worked with the client to identify our target audience, and organize the site content and navigation around the needs of our core users.
For design and user experience, we focused on a user-friendly, human-centered design that put kids and families front and center.
To help address the short timeframe, we worked with the client on a well-defined work plan, a shortened period for revisions and feedback, and (most importantly) a plan for what can be accomplished by launch, and what needs to be addressed post-launch in “phase two.”
Despite not beginning the project until mid-February, the site was launched on time and under budget by July 1st, 2024.
The site has served almost 500k users in its first 9 months, providing a single online resource for families who previously had to navigate 5 or more different departments for information.
Electric Citizen continues to partner with DCYF on additional site features and improvements post-launch.
