San Bernardino County’s Community Development & Housing Agency was a unique customer. We were tasked to redesign and develop an already half-developed website, with no real time for UX design, discovery, or content gathering. As we were trying to rush through a quick discovery we realized that the site was actually depicting two organizations the Community Development & Housing Agency (CDHA), the parent Organization, and the Community Development & Housing Department (CDHD), the child organization. Both organizations deserved their own website but the customer did not plan for this.
With our hands tied, I came up with a solution. We would treat the home page like a one-page site that depicted the CDHA Parent Org. This would showcase all 3 of the children organizations underneath their umbrella. And when you went to visit the CDHD website, it would still technically be the same site, but the look and feel would be as different as our web standardization system would allow. Thus making it feel like you went to two different websites.
This site was also one of the first to showcase the Web Standardization Initiative in action. The site is using the Custom Bolt Theme which I played a key role in creating, now with the Standard Header and Standard Footer that will be implemented in all of San Bernardino County’s websites. This site also uses custom WordPress Gutenberg Blocks (which I also played a key role in creating) that create standard components throughout all of the County’s websites.
