Search.gov turns 25

[nicolebrennan]

At a glance

comment: # A milestone birthday for search.gov happens September 22, 2025. We want the website to celebrate its 25th anniversary with an Anniversary Edition in the early fall with special design elements and interactive features so that our community can celebrate our rich history and look forward to the future. Maybe take this opportunity and timeline for use for the website relaunch and brand refresh.

comment: # The goal is to engage our audiences with features that highlight our evolution, showcase memorable milestones, and integrate modern design with our brand's legacy. As we roll out these features, stakeholder feedback and rigorous testing will be critical to ensure a seamless and delightful user experience.

Planned feature releases

• Interactive timeline that details our journey over the past 25 years
• Celebratory Anniversary Banner that appears on the homepage and SM posts during the anniversary period.
• Commemorative Content Section (possibly), a dedicated area featuring photos, stories, and videos that document key moments in history
• Social Media Integration with easy to use sharing buttons so users have share anniversary highlights

Stakeholder Notes

• The anniversary features must prominently showcase milestones and be easy to share on SM
• Incorporate celebratory themes while staying true to our brand identity, responsive and visually appealing design is a must
• Ensure these features integrate cleanly with our current engineering system. We need to automate tests in place and no degradation of site performance.

Acceptance Criteria

We use DRY behavior-driven development wherever possible.

Scenario:

1. Interactive timeline
2. Anniversary banner
3. Commemorative content
4. Responsive design and cross browser compatibility
5. Social media integration
6. Performance and regression testing
7. Stakeholder sign off

...

then...

Preview Give feedback

1. [a thing happens]
2. Design: Create high fidelity mock ups for the website
3. Design: Create high fidelity mock ups for the (interactive) timeline
4. Design: Design: Create high fidelity mock ups for banner
5. Development: Build out the (interactive) timeline
6. Development: Build out the Anniversary banner
7. Collaborate with Content team to gather and prepare commemorative materials
8. Create and implement social media sharing strategy and functionality
9. Design: Social media templates
10. Conduct performance, responsiveness, and regression testing across supported browsers
11. Stakeholder review: present prototypes for feedback and iterate

Shepherd

• UX shepherd:
• Design shepherd:
• Engineering shepherd:

Background

Security Considerations

Required per CM-4.

---

Process checklist

• Has a clear story statement
• Can reasonably be done in a few days (otherwise, split this up!)
• Shepherds have been identified
• UX youexes all the things
• Design designs all the things
• Engineering engineers all the things
• Meets acceptance criteria
• Meets QASP conditions
• Presented in a review
• Includes screenshots or references to artifacts
• Tagged with the sprint where it was finished
• Archived

If there's UI...

• Screen reader - Listen to the experience with a screen reader extension, ensure the information presented in order
• Keyboard navigation - Run through acceptance criteria with keyboard tabs, ensure it works.
• Text scaling - Adjust viewport to 1280 pixels wide and zoom to 200%, ensure everything renders as expected. Document 400% zoom issues with USWDS if appropriate.

[nicolebrennan]

Trello card associated: https://trello.com/c/7sKUjjYM/2-searchgov-turns-25
Work will be directly documented here in Github.