Building foundations and establishing best practices for multiple digital teams for the Australian government.
Australians view the government as a single entity; however, there are many separate agencies that make up the government. myGov is an online portal for over 25 million Australians to access government services in one place.
As a Senior Design Consultant in a large cross-functional team, together with our clients from Services Australia (SA) and the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), we designed the foundations for the future of myGov.
2020
Deloitte Digital
Australian Government
Senior Design Consultant
Problem
The project began as a Proof of Concept for myGov Beta. Then COVID-19 hit.
On my 2nd day on the project, we suddenly had a 1-day deadline to update Australia.gov.au, and had to pivot myGov Beta’s focus to provide access to services impacted by COVID-19.
Responsibilities
- Collaborated with design and content teams to rapidly produce new visual concepts for Australia.gov.au. These were presented to the Prime Minister and the Minister’s office and successfully secured our next phase of work.
- Managed the design system that would serve both myGov Beta and Australia.gov.au.
- Led the design team for the second delivery phase of myGov Beta.
- Regularly reviewed designs while continuing to manage the design system.
- Represented the design team in daily “Defect Triage” meetings.
- Designed multiple components and page templates for MyGov Beta, primarily the myGov Inbox.
The colour palette was restrained to ensure legibility and convey a formal tone. A base of navy blue represented tradition and trust for a government website, complemented by a more modern interaction colour of electric blue.
It was a particularly interesting challenge designing the information hierarchy for the Inbox on mobile, such as how many actions to display and where to place them.
The biggest design challenge for the Inbox was the visual to convey an unread message. I avoided coloured rows due to it being overwhelming against the grey background. The blue triangle was uninvasive and visibly different to stand out as an indicator.
Challenges
- COVID-19.
- One day everyone was in the office, and the next we were all working from our bedrooms. Ongoing communication became critical to ensure effective collaboration and to build trust with our stakeholders.
- It was tricky to take the initial design library – a big mess of random components from the Proof of Concept – and turn it into something structured and usable for the long term. I transformed it into a solid design system that served several designers working at pace in 1-week sprints.
- Sketch was the go-to design tool, but our government clients used Adobe XD. I was asked to transfer our entire design system from Sketch to Adobe XD over the course of 5 weeks – while learning to use Adobe XD for the first time!
- In addition to facilitating Sketch training for my cross-functional team, I used my newfound knowledge to educate other designers who were asked to use Adobe XD on a separate government project.
Key learnings
- This project was a lesson in dealing with difficult stakeholders. I learnt that it’s important to keep them involved and communicate often, so that key decisions and ownership in final deliverables are shared.
- I worked closely with our Accessibility Lead to ensure we met web accessibility standards. This sparked my interest in joining Deloitte Digital’s Accessibility Community of Practice, followed by completing a certificate in an Introduction to Web Accessibility.
Due to the minimal design, icons were key in aiding navigation. We also added a multi-coloured bar above the header for visual interest and most importantly, to easily recognise myGov at a glance.
Result
Our releases focused on services impacted by COVID-19, including:
- Australia.gov.au website
- Refreshed authenticated myGov experience, including a dashboard with an at-a-glance view of a citizen’s Centrelink payments, profile and myGov inbox
For myGov Beta, we delivered:
- 70+ features
- 400+ user stories
- 270+ design variations
I documented and uploaded 30 myGov Beta components into DTA's “Community of Practice” forum, which houses suggestions for design system components. This is a foundational resource for multiple government teams throughout Australia.
The response to this was so positive, that the QLD Department of Health requested I run a session to explain our design team’s processes and approach for the design system, as inspiration for their network of health sites.