National Design Studio

ndstudio.gov

3 points·nomilk··6 comments

One has to wonder whose ass I have to chew out to fix a 70% margin right-aligned body paragraph. My parents would have no idea what is even on this page, but maybe that's part of the point.

Looks like they're focussed on recruitment (and not much else yet), so the site prioritises design over anything else.

Given how new it is [0], it might change rapidly as priorities change.

[0] Wayback machine first captured it on 25 Aug 2025: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://ndstudio...

What a waste. America had world-class web design talent when 18F designed our federal pages, now America looks like a Sephora catalog.

Personally, I think it's fine for the NDS site itself to look design-focussed (or, like a Sephora catalog). I presume that slick, modern design won't be used on every government website.

Of the Australian government websites I've used, they seem to come in both extremes; some with incredibly poor UX/design, and others with some surprisingly great design. A similarly complex task on a bad site could take 60+ minutes, whereas on the well-designed site more like 5 minutes. Makes a big difference when trying to get things done.

...so you have no basis of comparison for how American federal web resources used to look? That explains some things.

All the glamour seems nice until you're in a country of continental expanse, with territories from the pacific islands to the caribbean, and with equal citizens living in areas with low-bandwidth internet access.

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