Development Hub PDX, also known as DevHub, is the City of Portland’s online permitting portal. Those requesting a permit use DevHub to apply for a permit, pay fees, as well as schedule inspections. DevHub was launched in 2019 to allow for the online submission of trade permits (electrical, plumbing, and mechanical) as well as permit applications that did not require a review of plans before issuing a permit. In December 2020, the portal was expanded to include residential and commercial permits.
Although the DevHub was a substantial leap forward in online permit submitting, the system has relied on simplified graphics and information delivery. Later this fall, the City of Portland’s Bureau of Development Services (BDS) will launch a refreshed version of the DevHub system featuring:
- New, updated graphics,
- Collapsible and expanding menus,
- Updated plain language instructions, and
- Additional conditional logic.
Lila Pigott, supervisor of the BDS Digital Business Services team, explains, “The DevHub Refresh initiative is an exciting and complex project being led by the Bureau of Development Services Digital Business Services team. We are fully updating the DevHub interface to make it more modern, accessible, and intuitive for our customers.”
Refreshing the DevHub system is a challenging project as the Bureau wants to guarantee that customers see no interruption to their use of the portal while the system is being updated. Pigott remarks, “The complexity of this update means lots of quality assurance testing is occurring to ensure that our customers can conduct business-as-usual in this new interface. We are looking forward to soon sharing this new and improved interface.”
The newly refreshed “My Permits” page features mouseover tooltips to clean up an overload of text, a heading bar that also functions as a breadcrumb trail for customers, categorized permits for customers to more quickly find permits in process, and a static menu bar to allow customers to navigate the system more freely.
The newly refreshed landing page displays plain language instructions, more intuitive portal features, a constant left-aligned menu bar for improved customer navigation, as well as collapsible and expandible menus to prevent customers from wandering too far off main portal pages.