Design study · Universal pre-K program · North Carolina
Free preschool for every Durham four-year-old
A redesign concept for a county universal pre-K program where the entire site has one job: getting an eligible family from curiosity to application.
Concept only. Facts are sourced from durhamprek.org; this is not the official Durham PreK website.
- Early education website
- Ask answer surface
- English / Spanish switch
- Site directory
- Accessibility scorecard
Durham PreK — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
Universal pre-K only works if the families who qualify actually apply, and the barrier is rarely interest — it is uncertainty. Do I qualify, is it really free, which sites are near me, what do I need to bring. Those questions have real answers buried in eligibility documents and FAQs, and a family reading in Spanish frequently gets a thinner version of the site than one reading in English, which inverts who most needs the information.
The approach
An answer-first Ask surface is grounded in the program's real enrollment, eligibility, and FAQ content and returns source cards, so a parent gets the answer and can see where it came from — which matters when the answer determines whether they apply. A true top-bar English and Spanish switch gives both languages the same site rather than a reduced translation. The front desk is apply-first, and an accessible directory of real program sites answers the near-me question directly. A real before-and-after accessibility scorecard from an axe-core scan of 26 live pages keeps the claim measurable rather than asserted.
The result
Ten routes with an answer-first Ask over real program content, a genuine language switch, a filterable locations directory, and a measured accessibility comparison, using the program's own photography and four-color palette.
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