NSW Health
New South Wales Health needed to find a solution to their ever growing demand for analytics. They required a self-serve platform on their intranet site and a team to ensure a secure and appropriate collection and distribution of data.
Key project challenges
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Balancing competing stakeholder needs
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Understanding very complex systems and processes
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Designing a platform that caters for beginners through to experts
My role
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My role was to lead the client relationship
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Conduct research,
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Synthesise findings
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Develop designs for this service.
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Streamlined processes, protocols and guidance for data analysis​
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Created a system to link people using data with analysis expertise
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Assisted capability development for a skilled team
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Safely distributed data for sound policy making
Project achievements
My project activities
The process
Understand the needs of the client
We interviewed more than 10 stakeholders across multiple divisions of the Health department to understand their goals and aims for this project.
'We need data to drive policy decisions, improve the populations health and be economically informed!'
Understand who the users are
We then completed 5 workshops, with up to 10 attendees at a time to understand how they use data, how they gather data themselves and how they would want to use a service of this nature to do their jobs. From this, we created 5 personas.
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'I am not trained in statistical analysis, I need help to make the right decisions in government.'
Create a high level plan for the service
'We need professionals to help us analyse this data!'
After synthesising the large amount of information we had gathered, we used this to develop 5 service blueprints. Each representing the different service levels that would be offered; from self-serve to full service. These blueprints were formed in coordination with the client, gathering their input, feedback and expertise over a multiple week period and several workshops.​
Develop an interface that empowers users to self serve
Our role then was to design the self-serve portion of the service.
'I just need some data quickly, let me access it myself!'
Participatory design
The NSW Health team was involved closely in the process of creating designs for the interface. This was achieved through a series of facilitated workshops. An existing early stage prototype from the NSW Health team was used as a key requirements document. This ensured that all stakeholders had a clear understanding of design decisions.​
Insight led
Research showed the interface had to cater for novices with data, right through to experts. Challenging us to create a solution that empowered all users to handle data accurately and responsibly, especially given the impact on public policy.
Accessible design
Designs had to fit within the existing design language of the New South Wales government. This meant using existing components where appropriate, but also creating new as well, as the interface displayed information in a whole new way. All to a WCAG 3 standard.
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Complex visualisation
It was very challenging to design an interface that allowed users to correlate multiple data sets at once. This required a lot of stakeholder input and testing to achieve the appropriate result, before moving to the development phase.
The final designs were handed off to a third-party development partner. This required a multi layered approach:
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Annotated designs
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Consultation with the developers and product team
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Multiple rounds of UX review