Cook County Assessor’s Office

Client Needs

• Needed a modern, user-friendly design to make it fast and  easy for the public to find information about their property or our office.
• Completely rebuild the navigation and information architecture.
• Use of ASP.NET Masterpage templates to make it easy for developers and content managers to work with the website.
• Create space for advertising.
• Quick answers built into the website’s interface so that when a user may not understand a particular term they can hover over the question mark icon to get answers instantly, without navigating away from the page.
• Coordinate with each of the office’s departments to gather the requirements for their particular sections on the website.  Then, create and implement those pages.

Outcome

The new Cook County Assessor’s Website allows users to quickly accomplish tasks & learn assessment information without having to visit the office in person. Some of tasks users can accomplish include the ability to file an appeal, apply for an exemption, and check the status of your current & past appeals or exemptions. All the assessment information is easy to find. Some of the topics include: How Property Is Valued, Understanding Your Assessment, Calculating an Estimated Tax Bill, and 7% Expanded Homeowner’s Exemption.

The website was built with Usability, Orientation and Expandability high on the priority list. The site is expandable to the effect that we can add new navigational links and content to the site without having to lose old content and without compromising the overall layout of the site. Also, the main features that most users come to our site for are the most prominant on the page to help guide the focus of the user. The entire site’s design can be changed relatively quickly via a single ASP.NET Masterpage & CSS. The source code of all the pages are commented well within the actual pages to allow for easier and more efficient designing & development in the future.

The user will always know where they are at with the breadcrumb trail toward the top of the site and all content on the pages is straight to the point, void of any unnecessary clutter. All the content from the old site was successfully transferred over to the new site but was reorganized to allow users the choice to view it or leave it hidden rather than showing it to them all at once which adds to disorientation and takes attention away from the page’s most important content.

Most importantly, the user’s experience is much more enjoyable. Users can get in and get out. The new site’s layout directs the user where they need to go quickly by limiting the amount of content being displayed at once. Even so, the entire site’s content is easily accessible within no more than a few clicks.