A new website for the Fair Work Commission
I led the design of a new website for the Australian Fair Work Commission improving access to justice for all workers.
The problem
Our website design project aimed to solve the following problems:
1 How can we make the user experience less frustrating for users trying to access important information?
2 How can we reinvent and modernise the FWC website and brand?
3 How will a new website be received and how will it be improved?
Aligned with their new branding, which I also designed, my team at Hide and Seek Digital evolved the Fair Work Commission’s UI away from the corporate, towards something more modern, minimal and mellow. We banished deep scrolls in favour of succinct pages informed by actual user stories. The branding program for the FWC was run through branding workshops and stakeholder interviews before a series of concepts were presented and a selection made. From there a comprehensive atomic design system and style guide was developed.
Page templates in the design system
Mobile templates in the design system
Components in the Design System
Working side-by-side as a multi-disciplinary team, Hide and Seek and the Fair Work Commission used the government Service Design and Delivery process to make sure the future-state site addressed user pain points while taking advantage of opportunities for improvement.
This approach covers user research, user experience design, content design, writing, technical architecture, development, and content migration. We applied this thinking to a project roadmap and rolled-out a refreshed website for workers from all walks of life. Content was a big factor in this transformation. We crushed duplication, distilled important messaging and revised language with consideration for the reader. We revised content to meet a standardised readability level to ensure that everyone (especially folks that speak multiple languages or use English as a second language) can connect the dots, find what they need and understand the information provided.
Part of the Style Guide
After 19 hour-long stakeholder interviews, subject-matter experts felt heard, sharing their support for a fundamental shift in the Commission’s future digital presence.
We used the insights and data analytics from these sessions to help identify groups with unique attributes, then we crafted further research activities to test on a range of different audience groups. With the combined knowledge of their experiences, we gained a granular understanding of the issues faced by each group.
Employment is important to everyone, including people of different abilities. So we made sure the site was readable not just for humans, but for scanners and screen readers that help make our lives easier. Accessibility was lifted across the site to meet WCAG standards globally, curbing the need to call or contact the Fair Work Commission manually.
With a better understanding of their users’ pain points, the Fair Work Commission’s website is now better-placed to serve – and already delivers better structure, flow and information architecture than before. Pages are crafted with user-experience in mind, with journeys simplified through plain outcome-oriented language. Intuitive design and integrations make search functional, so users can find the forms they need in a way that’s mobile-friendly and easy to read.
I conducted a series of user testing sessions once the new site was live to test against the baseline achieved with previous testing and compile both qualitative and quantitative data and analytics which was presented back to a very happy client.
Example of results of User Testing