The Challenge
The Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance (DCI) oversees the regulation of industries such as insurance, banking, credit, loans, and public utilities. Its responsibilities include rule making, enforcement, licensing, public communication, and fiscal management of state insurance funds and federal grants. In 2023, DCI determined that its outdated, sprawling web presence needed a significant overhaul to simplify management and modernize operations. The goal was to migrate to the latest version of Drupal, the state’s preferred content management platform.
Our Approach
As the Commerce and Insurance Drupal partner, we brought extensive experience with similar projects. After thorough discovery involving stakeholder input, user interviews, and audits of existing materials, we defined audience segments and use cases to guide the redesign. Key efforts included:
- Information Architecture: Planning and testing new site organization, user journeys, and navigation through iterative testing.
- Design Patterns: Developing theming and interactive elements, moving from low-fi to high-fi mockups, validated by user testing.
- Technical Decisions: Structuring content types, data frameworks, workflows, and modules to align with goals.
- Content Migration: Documenting and executing plans for cleaning, revising, transferring, and automating content migration using Agile methodology.
The Result
The project resulted in a Drupal implementation managing five distinct sites with shared functionality and customization. Highlights include:
- A consistent design theme with flexibility for sub-theming.
- Component-driven structures enabling visual page building across 7,000+ pages and assets.
- Statewide search appliance integration.
- Custom APIs for public access to sanitized data from 14 internal systems.
- Standardized workflows and custom views, along with public-facing forms and form-building functionality.
Completed in just 10 months, the project met all objectives ahead of schedule and within budget, delivering a streamlined, efficient, and user-friendly web experience.
