Design study · City government · Connecticut
A city website built like a junction, not an org chart
Meriden calls itself the Crossroads of Connecticut, and the website concept takes that literally: every route a resident needs starts from one clear place, in English or Spanish, on a phone at a bus stop.
Concept only. Facts and media are sourced from the City's published site and solicitation; this is not the official City of Meriden website.
- Municipal website redesign
- WordPress theme
- English and Spanish
- WCAG 2.2 AA
- Search or Ask
- Employment workflow
City of Meriden — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
Most municipal sites are organized the way a city is organized — by department. That works for the people who already know which department they need. It fails the resident trying to pay a bill, find the right permit, report a problem, check when a meeting starts, or apply for a job, who has to learn the city's internal structure before they can do any of it. Meriden's staff answer those same practical questions all day, which is a fair sign the website was not answering them.
The approach
The design starts from the city itself rather than a template. Meriden is a place where I-91 and I-691 meet, where the rail station sits between Hartford and New Haven, and where the Green, Harbor Brook, and the traprock ridge share one aerial frame — so the organizing motif is a junction: a two-axis line meeting at one interchange, recurring as the homepage route board, the section dividers, and the search progress. English and Spanish are persistent server-rendered routes, not a translation widget, with search, errors, labels, alt text, and metadata all changing with the locale. A masthead Search-or-Ask box covers 1,167 English records and a 57-record Spanish collection behind a single input. The palette is cool rather than beige — rail navy, civic silver, traprock green — with daffodil yellow, drawn from Meriden's spring landscape, as the one signature accent.
The result
A working site of 26 English and Spanish routes, including a full municipal employment workflow, using the city's own official photography and seal. WCAG 2.2 AA testing returned zero axe violations across every tested route, and the no-JavaScript state stays usable — which matters more than spectacle for a reader who is standing outside on a bad connection.
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