Kane County
Kane County’s Sheriff’s Office website needed a full overhaul. The site served 530,000 residents across Illinois’ fifth-largest county, but it looked outdated, broke on mobile devices, and buried department information across pages that led nowhere. DAP built a complete digital strategy, responsive UX design, and original content plan for the Sheriff’s website redesign. The project covered custody, patrol, civil, and warrants pages along with citizen forms and contact portals.
Kane County is a public municipality in Illinois that serves 530,000 residents across 25 departments and commissions. The County's IT department manages websites for every department, including the Sheriff's Office. DAP redesigned the Sheriff's website and delivered digital strategy, UX design, content, and project management.
How We Helped Kane County
Project Summary
Kane County brought DAP in to completely redesign the Sheriff’s Office website. The old site looked dated, didn’t work on phones, and scattered department information across pages that went nowhere. DAP studied the top sheriff websites in the country and used those findings to design responsive page templates for every section. The team wrote all copy from scratch and ran the project through milestone-based delivery.
The Challenge
Outdated Web Presence Legacy Sheriff's Website
The Sheriff's Office website hadn't been touched in years. Residents looking for information about custody, patrol, warrants, or civil processes had to dig through a layout that made no sense on a modern browser. The mobile experience was worse.
No Mobile Experience Zero Responsive Design
Citizens who pulled up the Sheriff's site on a phone saw broken layouts, unreadable text, and forms they couldn't fill out. A county of 530,000 residents had no mobile experience at all. People who needed answers on the go hit a dead end every time.
Fragmented Navigation Scattered Department Content
Custody, patrol, civil, and warrants information lived on separate pages with no connection between them. Residents clicked through dead ends trying to find basic answers. Nothing tied the Sheriff's departments together into one browsable site.
Compliance & Accessibility ADA Compliance Gaps
The site missed ADA accessibility standards, which put the county at legal risk and locked out residents who rely on screen readers and other assistive tools. Half a million people depend on this site. Accessibility gaps on a government website that size are a liability.
How we Helped Kane County
Digital Strategy & Site Benchmarking
Before touching a wireframe, we looked at what the best sheriff department websites in the country were doing right. DAP benchmarked those sites, pulled out the UX patterns that worked, and turned that research into a plan for Kane County.
- Analyzed leading sheriff department websites across the country
- Identified the UX patterns that worked best for residents across every section
- Wrote detailed page-level requirements for all 12+ page types
- Designed information architecture across custody, patrol, civil, warrants, and general divisions
- Ranked UX recommendations by how many residents they would affect
Responsive UX & Visual Design
We designed every page at full 1920×1080 resolution with responsive breakpoints. A resident on a desktop at home sees the same clean experience as someone on a phone at the courthouse.
- Built full-page responsive designs for 12+ unique page types at 1920x1080
- Created custom graphics and original imagery for each section
- Gave custody, patrol, civil, and warrants pages a consistent visual style
- Reworked navigation so five departments made sense on a phone screen
- Designed interactive forms for process applications and contact pages
Content Strategy & Development
We wrote every word on the site, from error messages and form confirmations to full department descriptions. The goal was plain language a resident could scan in ten seconds, not government jargon they’d need to read three times.
- Wrote brand copy for all Sheriff department sections, including custody, patrol, civil, and warrants
- Wrote functional microcopy for forms, error messages, alerts, and system confirmations
- Translated legal and procedural content into plain, citizen-friendly language
- Built FAQ content around the top questions Kane County residents ask
- Kept the same voice and reading level across all department pages and forms
What we Achieved
DAP delivered a fully redesigned Sheriff’s Office website that covers all five divisions. Custody, patrol, civil, warrants, and public-facing services all live on one site now, with one navigation system and one design language. A resident looking for warrant information is two clicks away instead of five.
We built every page mobile-first with responsive breakpoints at a 1920×1080 baseline. Citizens now access custody information, file forms, check patrol updates, and contact the Sheriff’s office from any device. The experience works on a phone just as well as it does on a desktop.
The redesigned site meets full ADA accessibility standards. Residents who use screen readers, keyboard navigation, or other assistive tools can now reach every page and form on the Sheriff’s site. The county eliminated the legal exposure that came with the old site’s compliance gaps.
DAP pulled custody, patrol, civil, warrants, and general Sheriff sections into one site with shared navigation and a consistent design. Before, residents bounced between disconnected pages looking for answers. Now the department structure makes sense at a glance.
