Veterans told us that VA Medical Center websites are confusing to navigate, contain outdated or missing information, and don’t match their VA health care journey.
VA knows we have to do better for our Veterans.
Using human-centered design and agile development practices, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Digital Media partnered with the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) Digital Experience Product Office to research, design, and build a new VAMC website that can be deployed individually for each VAMC that better meets the needs of Veterans, their families, and caregivers.
This video markets this new digital experience to the Veterans who use the new VA Medical Center website. In addition to marketing this new experience to Veterans, this video also gives other VA Medical Centers around the country a glimpse of how they can leverage this new VA website design for their own facilities.
The development process for this video began by meeting with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center website redesign team to understand the goals, objectives, and audience for the video. This was followed by a deep dive into the background of the website redesign and understanding of the redesign project, including what the redesign had to offer to medical centers and the Veterans they serve. With this insight, our creative team drafted a script, sample visuals, and storyboards to gain consensus on the narrative and visual style, which was guided by a well-established department brand guide (also developed by our creative team).
We relied heavily on motion graphics and website screen captures to tell this story. Since photo images of technology and people can become dated very quickly, we’ve found the use of motion graphics allows the video to have a longer shelf life. Since the video was a promotion of a real life product, it was important to show the website in action so that VA Medical Center directors could get a sneak peek at what was being offered.
Even though we produced this video while development and testing of the website redesign were still underway, the use of screen captures within illustrated frames gave us the flexibility to swap out examples when the user interface design changed dramatically, without having to redevelop the entire video or lose too much time on production.
Finally, the script, voiceover, and visuals were developed with accessibility and Section 508 compliance in mind and includes accurate closed captioning so that the information within the video is accessible to anyone regardless of ability.
