City of Portland Permitting Website

Six bureaus. Six websites. Zero clarity.

Portland residents trying to build a deck had to visit three different city websites just to figure out if they needed a permit. The Bureau of Development Services had one page. The Water Bureau had another. Urban Forestry had a third. Each used different terminology. Each contradicted the others.

Contractors wasted hours decoding government jargon like "impervious surface area" and "right-of-way dedication." Homeowners submitted the wrong forms because there was no way to know which forms were right. City staff fielded calls all day long answering questions that a decent website should have handled in seconds.

The city was consolidating its permitting bureaus into Portland Permitting & Development, creating one department instead of six. They needed a digital experience that matched. They needed a complete rethink, not a migration of the old chaos to a new URL.

The structure problem

The existing website reflected the city's org chart, not the resident's task. If you wanted to add a bathroom to your house, you had to already know that plumbing permits came from one bureau, structural permits from another, and that you might need a tree preservation review if your project was near the property line.

Nobody knows that. Not homeowners. Not even most contractors.

The result was a high volume of incomplete applications, frustrated residents, and highly paid city reviewers spending their time on basic questions instead of actual reviews. The permitting process had a reputation for being opaque and adversarial. The people were not difficult. The system made everything harder than it needed to be.

And the mobile experience was worse. Complex tables broke on phone screens. Navigation menus were unclickable. The site failed basic accessibility standards, which meant residents with visual impairments or those using screen readers were effectively locked out of government services.

What we did

We spent ten months on this project, from February 2024 through early 2025. The work broke into three phases: discovery, content strategy, and design.

Discovery: Learning what people actually need

We started with people, not wireframes.

We ran five workshops with the city's Permit Improvement Team and representatives from all six bureaus. These were working sessions where staff mapped out their own workflows and identified exactly where the digital handoffs were failing.

We interviewed 15 users across the spectrum: first-time homeowners who had never pulled a permit, small contractors who dealt with the system weekly, and large developers who knew every workaround. From those interviews, we built detailed personas. These were data-backed profiles that drove every design decision, not generic archetypes. The "Frustrated Homeowner" persona, for example, highlighted the anxiety around accidental non-compliance. That insight shaped how we wrote every piece of guidance copy.

Then we hosted an open house. Eighty people showed up, including city staff, local contractors, and residents. We printed our early wireframes on poster-sized boards and handed out sticky notes. The feedback was immediate, unfiltered, and invaluable. We learned more in three hours than we would have in three weeks of review cycles.

Content strategy: Tearing down the old architecture

The content audit was forensic. We cataloged every page, PDF, and FAQ related to residential permits. We tagged each item for relevance, accuracy, and redundancy. What we found was predictable: duplicate information, contradictory guidance, and critical details buried in documents nobody could find.

We rebuilt the information architecture from scratch. Instead of organizing by bureau (Bureau of Development Services, Water Bureau, Urban Forestry), we organized by project lifecycle: Research, Apply, Review, Inspect. A homeowner adding a deck could now find everything in one place, organized by what they needed to do next. Zoning, structural, water, trees: all together.

The copy got the same treatment. Passive voice became active. "It is required that the applicant submit documentation" became "Submit your application by..." We replaced jargon with plain English wherever possible, and where technical terms were unavoidable, we added explanations. The goal was to reduce intimidation and make the permitting process feel like something a regular person could navigate without hiring a professional expediter.

Design: Making it real

With the structure and content strategy locked, we moved into design conceptualization.

We developed high-fidelity wireframes for every core user journey. These detailed layouts mapped out hierarchy, flow, and content placement, ensuring the most critical information ("Do I need a permit?") was impossible to miss. The wireframes incorporated the city's visual branding principles, accessibility requirements (WCAG 2.1 AA), and mobile-first responsive patterns.

These wireframes became the centerpiece of our open house event, printed on poster-sized boards where eighty stakeholders could review and critique them in real time. The feedback we gathered directly shaped the final recommendations.

We also ran a parallel discovery track on a "Permitting Wizard," a guided tool that would ask users a series of questions and tell them exactly which permits they needed. We benchmarked wizards from other cities, assessed technical feasibility within Portland's Drupal infrastructure, and tested different interaction models. The key finding: users preferred a transparent, step-by-step form where they could see their progress over a chatbot-style interface that felt like a black box.

Results

We delivered a comprehensive Findings & Recommendations Report that became the city's roadmap for Phase 1 development.

Research-validated improvements:

Our extensive stakeholder reviews, bureau staff interviews, public feedback sessions, and open house event produced a design direction that everyone was confident would transform the permitting experience. Based on the research, the new approach is expected to:

• Dramatically reduce time spent searching for permit information by consolidating six bureau websites into one task-based experience
• Significantly decrease user errors and incomplete applications through clearer guidance and plain-language content
• Free up city staff time currently spent answering basic questions that a well-designed website should handle

Project delivery:

• Completed 4% under budget despite coordinating six bureaus and extensive public outreach
• Delivered actionable insights and recommendations, vetted high-fidelity wireframes, and comprehensive supporting documentation
• Set the City up to secure funding for Phase 1 development based on the strength of the discovery work

What actually changed

The most important outcome was alignment.

Before this project, the permitting website was viewed as an information technology problem. By the end, it was recognized as a core component of the city's service delivery strategy. The collaborative design process got all six bureaus behind a single vision.

Portland now has a clear blueprint for their digital permitting experience. The information architecture, content strategy, and wireframes we delivered give the city everything they need to move confidently into development. When they add new permit types in the future, they will have a coherent framework to extend rather than starting from scratch.

The Permitting Wizard concept is ready for its next phase. The foundational research, technical feasibility analysis, and user-tested interaction patterns are in place. You cannot build intelligent guidance on top of a chaotic content structure, and now Portland has the structure to make it possible.

The city is armed with the right information and a validated plan to transform how residents interact with permitting. When development begins, they will not be guessing. They will be building on ten months of research, testing, and cross-bureau consensus.