If you’re reading this right now, you’re on a shiny new website created by Code for America and our collaborators at ClearLeft. We’ve been in testing for the last several weeks and this is by no means the end of development (we don’t believe in the end of development). But today, Valentine’s Day, is the day that we formally commit to this new design by turning off our old site.
The old site grew with us from year one — a fledgling organization — to now —- a solid organization at the center of a fast-growing movement called civic tech; the new site is one of the foundations for our next stage. What you see today is basically a minimum viable product — it does everything the old site did, in a more flexible and sustainable way, and enables us to grow and build further. As an example, you’ll see one section that still has the “Alpha” label — the Library. This section is new to us. We’ve collected Code for America’s videos, guides, and other how-to resources in one place, in a (hopefully) clear structure, but we haven’t yet done extensive content or web development. It’s out in the open for testing, gap identification, and continuing work.
This is the approach we will take, in general, from this point forward: we’re going to use the site to create great experiences for citizens, governments, and supporters — from applying for the Fellowship to finding a local project to support — and we’re going to seek feedback at every stage. The way the new site is built allows us to create quickly, test, and react. While we follow this practice for the health of CfA, we remain committed to using both technologies and processes that are accessible to local governments, and sharing the knowledge we gain so our partners can do the same.
Happy Valentine’s Day civic tech movement! We hope you love it.
Questions? Comments? Hit us up @codeforamerica.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.