Design standards and conventions - Enterprise-CMCS/cmcs-eregulations GitHub Wiki

Generally, while we do want to be succinct, lean toward being more descriptive and adding helper text for clarity.

Visual Elements

Icons: Default to adding text labels

Text Alignment: Default to left align

External Links: In general, these should be noted with an external link icon

Links: Default to underlining when reasonable, because our users sometimes miss links that don't have underlines

Language/UX Writing

Placeholder Text: Be more descriptive - "Search Title 42" vs. "Search"

Headings: Include both part/section numbers and text where appropriate - "42 CFR Part 433 – State Fiscal Administration" vs. "42 CFR Part 433"

Dates: Default to three-letter month with no period - "Jan 3, 2011"

Current/Present: Default to saying "latest." Avoid "current" and "present" since there's likely to be a delay between the release of a new version of the reg and what eRegs is displaying

Case: Default to title case to match Medicaid.gov

Reg Numbers and Titles: Use a dash between title/part numbers and titles - "Part 431 – State Organization and General Administration" (specifically, an en dash with spaces on both sides)

Section symbols: Include a space after the section symbol and before the number - "§ 433.107" (this should be implemented as a non-breaking space)

Specific Terms

eCFR is always capitalized like that

eRegulations is our product name. eRegs is an internal project nickname. We use a plain title describing the site (Medicaid & CHIP eRegulations) because it's part of the Medicaid.gov family of tools.