Permitting Council

Before you read...

I want to start off this section by saying the work done in this role is covered under multiple NDAs.  I can only enclose certain details without getting too specific. I apologize for the lack of images, I am not authorized to show them to the public.

In January 2024 I was approached by my manager at Dynamo asking if I had any additional bandwidth to take on another project. At this point in my career at Dynamo I was working on R&D, BusOps, USGS, and was just about to wrap up  Burris Logistics. With a full plate, I still said yes -  as I felt I needed a new challenge. 

​

The client was Permitting Council, a brand new government agency that was founded by Joe Biden himself. They improve the transparency, efficiency, and predictability of the federal permitting process for certain large, complex infrastructure projects like energy, water, transportation, broadband, and manufacturing projects. With this being a brand new agency, they had no previous website or content that they wanted to bring over into the new website.

The team was broken up into three different groups; Dynamo, another contracting company, and government representation/stakeholders. The stakeholders that we were working with were appointed directly by Biden, so the pressure of the project felt a little more amped up than usual. When first meeting with the team they were very clear on telling us that they don't have a vision for what the website could be. They didn't even have a logo made they were this new. This was a challenge because I did not have all the resources at my hands to immediately get to work.

​

When gathering requirements they wanted to see potential options for a landing page and then structure an IA afterwards to try to fit the websites build. This was somewhat a backwards approach but I eventually learned how visual of learners the stakeholders were.

I started out by building multiple low fidelity mockups that utilized  USWDS components. There was ZERO branding at this point so the mockups were all greyscale with lots of placeholders. The goal of these mockups were to try to get the stakeholders to land on a singular layout that they would like to build the IA around. Once those mockups were ready I did a design presentation for the stakeholders describing the differences and the benefits/pitfalls of each mockup. We landed on a very simple design that included design elements that any user who has visited a government website would recognize. This was beneficial because we  wanted to provide a familiar user experience for people who had never heard of Permitting Council that wanted to check out the website and learn more. Now that the stakeholders had approved a lo-fi mockup layout, the other contracting company wanted to build the IA as they were responsible for the architecture side of the site. I took this as an opportunity to start working on branding.

​

The branding took a lot of back and forth with the stakeholders to solidify. I started by building out multiple color palettes that would highlight primary, secondary, and accent colors. We landed on a color scheme that all stakeholders were happy with and moved on to typography. The typography was quick to decide as USWDS only approves of so many fonts and font variations, so we got that done in a day. Lastly the stakeholders wanted to ensure we used a voice that was helpful and friendly,  but still was professional. All that we were missing at this point was the logo, which we were told to continue the design process without because the stakeholders designers were working on it. At this point the IA was almost fully built out, but I at  least knew what the main sections of the site were going to be and what page types needed to be mocked up. 

​

High fidelity mockups are always my favorite part of the process but  before I jumped to that I needed to make low fidelity mockups for  basic content, large content, contact us, careers, staff, staff bio, and feedback form pages. All of these pages  took me about a week to design as I was able to repurpose elements from the BusOps and R&D projects. The review portion for these designs took longer than the landing page but we were able to get fully approved lo-fi mockups within 2 weeks after a few rounds of iteration. Now it was finally time to apply the branding we developed and create hi-fi mockups. 

​

The mockups were really starting to come together and show that all the work that was done to build the brand was worth it. I had hi-fi mockups made within a week that were ready for review and they looked amazing. I was so excited to show these to the stakeholders, then the unexpected happened. The stakeholders announced to us that they are going through a leadership change. There was a new stakeholder who was going to be THE stakeholder for the project. They came into the project guns blazing. First they did not like the information the website prioritized to display to the user. This forced us to go all the way back to the IA phase and restructure the website to fit in new information sections like projects and agencies. The navigation needed a major rework to include these massive sections that the new stakeholder wanted to highlight. It was a pain but I was still willing to rework the mockups to match the new IA structure. I also needed to create some new lo-fi mockups for the projects and agencies pages. By the time we were able to get back to the hi-fi mockup phase it was another month later.

The deadline for the launch of the project was creeping up and our project manager and developers were starting to get worried. The stakeholders were thankfully understanding as to why there was a hiccup in the design process. We marched forward through the hi-fi designs and applied the branding and new navigation structure to each page, eventually making it's way into a prototype. 

​

Reviewing the prototype with the stakeholders through a design presentation was crucial as they were not the most tech-savvy group. Navigating through Figma was not something I wanted to put them through, especially since their time is very limited. I was sure in the presentation to explain why certain design decisions were made by backing them up with USWDS and Section 508 accessibility requirements. Sometimes the stakeholders would get caught up in the content that was being displayed so I had to explain that this was all fake content and the focus of the call needs to be on the structure, branding, and navigation. They understood this clearly and I was able to gather clear feedback in those areas. That feedback I took back and made iterations to the mockups to then go through with the same stakeholders in the next design presentation. The stakeholders were happy with the mockups and gave their formal approval to move these designs to development. 

​

Throughout the development I worked very close with the main developer on my team to ensure that every detail was as shown in the mockup. Some developers have more attention to details than others and this developer was fantastic at catching the small things so it made my job a little easier in this stage. The stakeholders would review the dev build from time to time and come up with potential enhancements that we had to capture but carefully explain to them that going back to the design phase and reworking anything would force us to miss the deadline for the projects launch. We already had the delay previously in the project so they obliged and we took down the requests as post-launch enhancements.

December 2024 came and the website was ready to launch.  We made the deadline right on time and the site launch went through without a hitch. The stakeholders were thrilled with the websites usability and UI. January 2025   the stakeholders unexpectedly had to leave their positions due to the administration change. We were unable to get to the post-launch enhancements as the new stakeholders did not want to change anything to the site because they were unsure the new administration was going to keep this agency. In April 2025 the contract was brought to an end due to the government restructuring efforts being done.

​

This is a public-facing website, so feel free to check out the final product here:  https://www.permitting.gov/

​

​

TLDR: 

In January 2024, I joined a high-stakes project for the newly formed Permitting Council, a government agency created by the Biden administration to streamline federal infrastructure permitting. The project had no existing branding, content, or vision, so I led design efforts from the ground up starting with low-fidelity mockups, defining IA, and eventually building out the full visual branding. Despite initial approval, a leadership change midway through the project caused a major pivot, requiring a complete IA restructure and new mockups. We pushed through the challenges, and after thorough collaboration and multiple stakeholder reviews, the site launched successfully in December 2024.  The original stakeholders were thrilled, but due to administration changes in January 2025, no post-launch work was pursued. The contract ended in April 2025 due to federal restructuring.

Lessons Learned

• Starting from scratch no branding, no content, no direction requires a flexible mindset and strong initiative. I learned to lead stakeholders through the design process even when they didn’t know what they wanted yet.

• With a non-technical and high-level audience, clear communication, structured presentations, and visual aids (like mockups and prototypes) were critical to driving decisions and getting buy-in.

• Some teams just need to see it. I learned to prioritize quick mockups and prototypes over detailed documentation when working with visual learners to accelerate understanding and decision-making.

• A major leadership change flipped the project on its head. I learned not to get too attached to a direction and to stay adaptable when priorities shift suddenly even if it means redoing weeks of work.

• Working with multiple teams (internal, external contractors, and government reps) required careful alignment. I had to be proactive in sharing updates, clarifying ownership, and bridging gaps between design and development.

• USWDS and Section 508 requirements were my north star. Designing within federal guidelines gave us a solid foundation to build trust with stakeholders before introducing any custom design elements.

• Near launch, I had to push back on last-minute feature requests to protect the timeline. I learned the value of managing expectations and communicating the impact of scope changes clearly and respectfully.

• Post-launch feedback showed that design decisions are often revisited even if the window for changes has closed. I now build in flexibility and future-thinking into my mockups to better accommodate ongoing iterations.