USWDS-Site - Indent left navigation subfields

[jaclinec]

During top tasks usability testing 🔒, a user commented that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the hierarchy of items in the left navigation on our site since all the items seem to be at the 'same level' and suggested we indent the subfields.

For instance, our left navigation items are all in alignment, making it touch to know the 'level' of information:

We should consider indenting subfields. I believe this recommendation is also supported by the recent content audit. 🔒

Additional context

To give more context on how to prioritize the new issues and feature requests that came out of top task testing, here's the full list of issues divided into 3 buckets and in order of priority (though it is somewhat flexible):

Low lift recommendations:

• Implement better synonym searching in the component search function. #2724
• Make design kits stand out more on the page and consider offering access to the kits in more visible places on the site (such as the homepage). #2723
• Provide a “Show all” link near the showcase list on the homepage that takes users to the entire list of sites that use USWDS. #2725
• Change the names of the step indicator and in-page navigation components to better match user expectations. #2728
• Link to form-related components (like step indicator) from the form component page (better cross-linking in general) #2729
• Indent subgroups in the left navigation. #2730
• Consider putting “References” at the very bottom of the component page (see data visualizations page). #2732
• Make the language selector preview have dark text with white background. (need to discuss before creating issue)
• Make the icons above the components, patterns, templates, etc. on the homepage clickable. #2734

Medium lift recommendations:

• Offer component previews on the components page. #2736
• Provide a glossary of definitions of heading labels (patterns, components etc.). (First we need to create a glossary component (see proposal discussion). Then we can address adding it to USWDS site.)
• Provide more context around showcase sites that use USWDS. #2737

High lift recommendations:

• Consider how we might reorganize the information architecture to better match users’ mental models of how information should be grouped and found. #2738