Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Fire Administration
Content and Interactivity
Primary audiences for usfa.dhs.gov are the U.S. Fire Service and citizens interested in home fire safety. Web applications include a directory of 25,000 fire departments, help desk for fire incident reporting, firefighters honored on the Firefighters Memorial, directory of educational fire safety materials, directory of 35,000 fire-safe hotels, product recalls, and online ordering of publications. Static content includes 300 reports, brochures and fact sheets in numerous formats and a Kids Page (/kids). Other services include four RSS feeds and/or e-mail lists and a feedback form. Pages annually reviewed to determine if information is timely, relevant and correct. Links reviewed semi-annually.
Design, Usability and Accessibility
A Google search engine is used and search field is present in the upper, right corner on every page. A site index is available from the home page and footer of every page. A standard horizontal navigation bar is used on every page for the 10 primary sections. Left side navigation is added on subpages. A Spanish section and FAQ page are offered. Pages are designed to meet Section 508 requirements and W3C standards for XHTML, CSS and RSS. This site has been designed and tested to be compatible with Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, and Opera.
Evaluation and Metrics
USFA conducts usability testing, customer experience studies, card sorting, and paper prototyping of new designs. 200 customers in three years have helped determine usability problems so that priorities to correct deficiencies may be set and to measure progress. For the Fire Service, there was a dramatic increase in successful task completion rate from the first experience study (62.2%) to the second (80.9%). A contract to conduct a 508 audit of the site and usability testing with participants with disabilities is in the award stage. Other tools include a feedback form, Web Trends, and an application to monitor/redirect invalid URL’s.
Wildcard Category
To compare the site with other Government sites, the USFA Web site was entered in the 9th Annual Webby Awards. The site earned a "Webby Worthy" distinction from the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Our publications shopping cart application has handled orders for more than four million fire safety publications per year (/applications/publications/). During Hurricane Katrina, usfa.dhs.gov provided critical support in the hiring of 4000 firefighters for community relations jobs in disaster areas. After attending training conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group, Web staff now conducts usability testing in-house (where appropriate), allowing for more frequent testing and cost savings.
