Redesigning We the People

In July 2015, we announced a big change in the way we would answer petitions on We the People. We committed to responding to you within a 60-day timeframe, whenever possible. We assembled a team of people dedicated to getting your policy questions and requests to the right people so you get the most informed response. (Often, that meant the heads of agencies or the foremost experts on a given issue.) We also answered a backlog of 20 petitions, resulting in 2.5 million people receiving a response from us within a single day. We made it simpler for more people to create and sign petitions from any device.

It turns out that people use their phones to read the Internet — a lot. (Shocking, we know.) As a result, an overwhelming amount of the traffic on We the People came from phones, but earlier iterations of the site weren’t optimized for mobile. It’s not hard to imagine how frustrating this may have been for people trying to sign a petition, so we made the new version of We the People mobile-friendly. Now there are mobile and desktop breakpoints, allowing the site to scale-to-fit a variety of devices. Certain elements, like the “sign petition” form, shift to fit your screen, making it easier — and prettier! — to create and sign petitions from your phone. Think about it: You can now find, sign, and share a petition while on your daily commute. That’s pretty cool. We also did an extensive round of testing to ensure the site is accessible for screen readers, meaning that visually-impaired users can have the best experience possible.