Redesigning the NSW Design Standards for impact

Government information can be complex. Content designers manage this complexity and make it quicker and easier for people to understand through clear language and the organising of a section, page, or in this case, our revised NSW Design Standards.

When I took the role of revising the xNSW Design Standards, I faced a few hurdles:

1. I'm not a subject matter expert on the specialist topics I'd be designing for
2. I was new to Government and the processes which drive different parts of the business

Where to start

A 2019 a pilot looked at how teams across Government were applying the NSW Design Standards. We learnt two key things:

1. They lacked a clear intent for each, making them hard to follow
2. They were difficult to implement in local environments

We needed to structure the NSW Design Standards to not only make complex topics comprehensible, but to make them actionable. We needed our users to understand the intent behind each Standard without cognitive overload and how they might apply it, all within a quick scan of the content.

We achieved this by:

• Focusing on key words and specific titles rather than vague concepts
• Learning how users interact with the content
• Understanding what people need to know at any given point in their journey
• Understanding how the content informs the design – the design and the information must work together
• Defined a way to write less, whilst ensuring the message is clear

Design content with research

Co-design and testing sessions of the NSW Deign Standards told us that our first round of changes was still not nailing a key part - the intent.

The research pointed to a way of structuring the content to appoint roles to words. If a word is being used, what purpose does it serve? We found the best way to do that was to think about the content in 'sections', internally referred to as 1, 2 and 3 and we assigned each a succinct role.

We redesigned the headings (section 1) to front load the action and where possible, the reason or consequence of not doing the action. For example, Measure and improve, don't spin up and drop

We found the best way to clearly explain the headings (section 1) was to write (section 2) in prose style using a conversational tone with the 'why' something is important and 'what' it means.

We adapted (section 3) to be bullet points and include examples along with risks and benefits to make it more applicable and tactical for implementation.

Section 3 is where we've included in-bound links so that more detailed information can be found if relevant.

The NSW Design Standards structure

Section 1: The title

Intent: Know immediately what needs to be done to meet best practice
Use it to: Pause and consider “are we doing this?”

Section 2: Why it's important

Intent: Explain why it's important by including the risk/s associated with not doing it
Use it to: Make a concise value statement in a conversation - this is what you get if you do it and what happens if you don't.

Section 3: Implementation

Intent: To give experienced practitioners a way to understand the NSW Design Standards in a local context
Use it to: Understand some of the practices your team should be using when meeting best practice.