Births, Deaths and Marriages

Births, Deaths and Marriages, another part of the department of Internal Affairs, approached us to redesign their web content and move it onto Govt.nz.

Mobile screenshots of the site before and after — Before (left) and after (right). The new content was responsive, clear and integrated with relevant information from other government agencies.

In this discovery phase we found that users struggled to understand the big picture of a process like getting married. On the previous website, they often got overwhelmed by details without getting a frame of reference for what they were reading.

Post its and diagrams on a whiteboard — As part of our research, we mapped our assumptions about key user journeys and worked with contact centre staff to validate them.

We developed a timeline template to help people get a high level understanding before getting into specifics.

Screenshot of a timeline on how to get married. — The timeline template gives users the big picture before they navigate to detailed information.

We focussed on guerilla testing, trying out each batch of draft content at a public library or community computer centre to get feedback as it was developed.

Read more about this in Lana Gibson’s blog post Call Centre insight for births, deaths and marriages discovery phase and my post New templates for new content.