Challenges

The Oregon Public Employees' Retirement System (P.E.R.S.) provides extensive documentation for new hires on everything from creating an Outlook signature according to agency best practices, to requesting sick leave according to HR policy. The documentation template at the time did not follow accessibility best practices and was not designed to be used for longer pieces of documentation (~10+ pages). Also, certain design elements, such as spacing, were used inconsistently.

Solution

In order to overcome these challenges, I first revised the documentation template in order to meet minimum standards for font color to background color contrast - as set out by WCAG. I also added in a table contents which would allow for greater skimmability when documentation becomes long. Finally, I created a style guide so that design elements not covered in the template would be mutually agreed upon and applied consistently.

Results

The new documentation template is more accessible and user-friendly for P.E.R.S. employees. Also, the Table of Contents allows employees to more quickly find relevant information, saving time and resources for both the employee and the organization as a whole. Finally, the Style Guide ensures that future documentation - regardless of who it is created by - is created consistently.