The development team has been interviewing researchers, students, and grant managers to help us to redesign the "Find Funding" pages on nsf.gov. There's a lot more work to do, but here are some of the things we've been hearing.
For the last few months, the User Experience team has been talking to current and potential grantees about ways to improve the Find Funding features on NSF.gov. We've walked through the current site to discuss what works and what doesn't, and done some limited initial testing of prototypes for new pages and new features.
We wanted to share some of the common themes in the feedback we are getting, and are working to address in the new designs.
- Funding lists and search results need to include opportunities announced via Dear Colleague Letters.
- Many prospective researchers use the NSF.gov Award Search to see what kinds of proposals are being funded. It needs to be easier to navigate from award search results to active funding opportunities.
- It should be easier to quickly see if there are specific eligibility criteria or other restrictions on proposal submissions.
- It should be easier for early career researchers or those unfamiliar with the website to find all of the information they need to submit a proposal.
We'll be developing prototypes for funding-related pages in the next several months and we'll want to hear from you how we're doing. You can sign up to participate in user research here. To be notified when new content is added to beta, you can subscribe for email updates.