Work

A Redesign that Provides a Clear Path to Justice

Client

South Dakota Unified Judicial System

Industry:

Services:

A stylized photo of the Lady of Justice with a South Dakota Supreme Court seal.

Blend redesigned the SD UJS site for clarity, accessibility, and ease of use, with Umbraco CMS, better content tools, and improved document handling.

If you have ever come into contact with the courts, you are probably familiar with a state judicial site. They’re big, chock full of forms and guides, and serve as a centralized source of information for every possible court audience: judges, attorneys, plaintiffs, defendants. Which means when it comes time for a new site, the work can be complicated and work-intensive.

This is the world that the South Dakota Unified Judicial System (SD UJS) was living in, and it’s within this world that Blend was asked to help make a bit of sense.

Given the stressful nature of navigating the judicial system, site design and organization was focused on providing easy access to important content. Design leaned toward calm and simple, helping position the SD UJS not as a roadblock to overcome but instead as a guide and tool. And, because SD UJS provides a public service, accessibility and performance sat at the forefront — everything from keyboard and low-data navigability to contrast for color blindness were designed to WCAG AA 2.2 standards.

Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System home page at desktop width. Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System home page at mobile width.

Simplicity was key in redesigning the new South Dakota Unified Judicial System site.

Beyond design, the new SD UJS site is built using Umbraco, the State of South Dakota’s preferred CMS — and, for good reason. Umbraco’s editor-friendly interface helped ease the SD UJS team beyond their static CMS-free world and into a world where categorization and search provide both editorial relief and increased usability. Articles, help content, and even files are now classifiable and cross-referenced, helping editors add a single piece of content with the confidence it will be accessible in multiple places.

Of course, the courts create a lot of documentation — from Supreme Court hearings and decisions to the day-to-day forms used by the entire system — and managing PDFs and documents can sometimes be a total nightmare. In order to help improve both the editorial and functional use of court documents and forms, Blend developed a more editor-friendly model for uploading PDFs. Supreme Court decisions are now easily managed by the editorial staff, forms in multiple forms are logically grouped and related for ease of use, and a full document search allows those who know exactly what they want get exactly what they need.

Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System circuit finder at desktop width. Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System circuit finder at mobile width.

A redesigned court finder improved accessibility and clarified destinations.

Finally, SD UJS faced their biggest challenge: getting their “stuff” into the new site. Since content migration is often a complicated mix of straight copy-and-paste, structured automated migration, and straight up new and improved content pages, Blend worked with trusted partner Epicosity to split the work up between all parties. While Blend tackled automated migration of structured content and site structure, Epicosity and SD UJS reworked existing content, added in new pages, and filled out the site with useful, usable, and accessible content.

The overall result: a beautiful site that clearly outlines the judicial process — and, makes life easier for those who may already be working through tough situations. Good for SD UJS, and good for the people of South Dakota.

Project Highlights

  • Full discovery and design focused on usability for both first-time and consistent site users
  • Modeling and integration of reusable content and automated categorization
  • Integration and scheduled imports of Supreme Court decisions, rules, and documents
  • Partnership with Epicosity for content strategy and site migration
Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System Self Help page at desktop width. Screenshot of the South Dakota United Judicial System Self Help page at mobile width.

Self-help content was folded into the main SD UJS site.

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