Service NSW
Empowering residents living in bushfire-prone areas with life-saving support and resources.
Service NSW wanted to make it easier for NSW residents to access important bushfire information from the mobile app. The aim was to design a hub that is simple and would allow users to quickly get to what they need in times of distress. This hub would offer everything across the entire lifespan of a bushfire, from preparation, warnings and advice, to recovery services and financial aid.
Problem statement
Service NSW Mobile App residents living in bushfire-prone areas lack awareness about bushfire support available to them before, during, and after a bushfire. Our solution should deliver an easily accessible and reliable source of information and support with a strong focus on findability.
Role: Product Designer
Responsibilities: End-to-end research and design
Research
Who are our users and what are their needs?
We leveraged an existing Bushfire customer journey map built by our service designers to shed light on the phases someone will experience during a disaster. We learned that it is crucial to consider what people need before a disaster strikes as well as the ongoing aftercare needed to rebuild - not just during the event itself.
It allowed us visualise where in the journey there was friction and lacking support which helped us define what our role as a mobile app should be and what value we should offer.
What information should we include?
Bushfire guides and resources were collated from the Service NSW website, various State Government fire-fighting and fire reporting agencies, and emergency services.
We also included recovery resources, financial assistance, and contact information.
How do we organise and present such a large amount of information?
A card sort was conducted to understand how we can present this information in a way that aligns with people's mental model.
Participants were asked to group the list of guides and resources into categories that made sense to them. They were instructed to use the existing groups provided or to create their own.
The card sort resulted in 5 main categories: before, during, after, contact details, volunteering and donating.
We further refined the categories to use language that was more direct and descriptive of its contents whilst still maintaining the core of the card sort findings.
Validate
We created a survey to validate that the categories worked and users could find what they needed. Participants were given a scenario and a list of the above categories and asked where they expected certain pieces of information to be. The results showed that the categories made sense to people, however, some items can fall under multiple categories.
Main learnings and considerations:
Simplicity above all
Research has shown that a person's mental capacity and comprehension ability reduces significantly when experiencing distress.
Information needs to be presented with simplicity with a strong focus on enabling users to find what they need quickly and easily.
Trauma-informed design
When dealing with sensitive matters with profound effects, there's a responsibility to approach design with empathy and to follow trauma-informed design principles to prevent re-traumatising users. Imagery, language, and tone are some factors to consider.
Flexibility in findability
There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. In the context of findability, users need multiple entry points for the same information to cater to different ways of thinking.
Our goal is to provide a curated list of helpful links and services, presented in an easily digestible way, which can be accessed directly through the Service NSW app on your mobile phone.
A one-stop shop for all the information you need during bushfire season.
Ideation
I facilitated a sketching workshop with PM's, designers, and other main stakeholders to align on a direction that we could use as a starting point. The areas of focus that came from this exercise were navigation, information architecture, hierarchy, topics and categories.
A user flow was created to visualise the journey and understand how users would interact and move between screens.
Concept designs were then created on Figma and iterated on a weekly basis. Each variant was shared back to stakeholders and improved based on the feedback received. After several weeks of this, the final share back gave the designs a green light from designers, PM's, stakeholders, and engineers.
Final designs
The final high-fidelity designs were built using Figma. The result is a clean and simple interface with information nested under 7 main categories. The use of colour, iconography, and headings were carefully selected to match the design system and to give users an extra visual layer of navigation.
Next steps
As Service NSW continues to improve disaster support on the mobile app, we're looking to introduce more features such as allowing the app to push updates without the need to update the app itself and provide a seamless experience across website and mobile app using a shared content management system.
