Front End Development for the Open Source Mass.gov Project

In many ways, a website redesign is a lot like a puzzle. There are the individual pieces — UX, design, front-end development, back-end development — and each piece on its own is vital — but all of the pieces need to be connected properly to form a fully functional site and cohesive experience for site visitors.

"The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."

— Douglas Horton

As one can imagine for the Mass.gov project, this required a lot of communication between multiple vendors and stakeholders including MassIT, various state government agencies, Palantir.net (the agency that handled back-end development), and us at Velir (who took care of the UX, design, and front-end development). Shortly into this massive undertaking, we not only learned how to navigate the complexities of a government site redesign, we also discovered the subtle nuances of steering through the day-to-day challenges that exist in any large organization with multiple departments and stakeholders, each with their own priorities and expertise.

"Behind the seemingly simple web interfaces that make our lives easier, it takes professionals in a variety of disciplines, who are normally in their own silos, to break through barriers (organizational and operational) and come together to create what we use on a daily basis."

Learn about our approach as well as the technologies, tools, and processes we used for the front-end development of the Mass.gov redesign. Read the 2-part article on Medium.