Meeting Schedule
Optimizing Legislative Scheduling
Challenge
The Meeting Schedule app is used by both the Legislative Services Agency and state congressional committees to post meeting agendas online. The users range in age from 30 to 60, with varying levels of digital fluency. My challenge was to improve the usability and visual clarity of the app using only CSS changes—no markup or functional updates allowed.
Role
Web/Interactive Designer
Tools
Adobe CC, DevTools
Approach
I started by communicating with our agency users and using the app myself to simulate the posting workflow. As an early user familiar with technology, I assumed any confusion I faced would be even more challenging for others.
A quick task analysis and UI audit revealed a few major problems:
The color palette was overly harsh and inconsistent.
Color usage wasn’t intuitive or meaningful.
Tables were difficult to read, and all input fields looked equally important.
Using Chrome DevTools, I explored the live CSS structure and made real-time visual tweaks. I first reduced visual clutter by moving the color legend into a single column, which improved table legibility. Then I addressed the form layout—highlighting required fields with a soft yellow background and improving spacing to guide the user’s eye and reduce cognitive load.
Result
After writing a short guide, we rolled the update out to a test group of high-frequency users. Feedback was positive, especially around readability and reduced errors in form submission. The improved version is now being adopted by more committees, with plans to make it the standard across the board.
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