Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) Australia
my role. research & strategy lead
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in Australia operates a public-facing digital ecosystem containing hundreds of websites that provide services to Australian citizens and foreign nationals around the world.
The current user experience of these sites is outdated, inefficient, and confusing. Though under the DFAT umbrella, the sites lack a consistent brand or visual identity that creates a cohesive, familiar experience for users.
In my role with Hide and Seek Digital, I led the research stream for the DFAT web redevelopment discovery program in collaboration with the content and tech project streams. I managed the entire research scope for dfat.gov.au (core site) and 109 Australian embassy/consulate sites (post sites) around the world.
the problem.
Our discovery aimed to solve the following problems:
1 Who are the primary user groups for both the core and post sites?
2 What tasks do these users try to achieve?
3 How well are users able to complete those tasks using the existing DFAT sites?
With this information, we could help DFAT understand and clearly define the purpose for each site in their ecosystem. We would also provide recommendations about how to improve the overall experience with design, content, and tech using insights from each project stream.
kicking off discovery.
Before embarking on any research, the team engaged DFAT stakeholders through two remote workshops to understand: what they know about their users and how they define the purpose of their sites.
Workshop 1 was all about dfat.gov.au and engaged those stakeholders who manage day-to-day operations of the core site. Workshop 2 was focused on the post websites and engaged stakeholders responsible for managing embassy sites in their respective countries. I facilitated both workshops on back-to-back days with support from the project team.
To encourage greater participation on day 2, I simplified the workshop activities and took a more interactive approach by pre-filling the Miro board with information we already knew as a starting point. I then asked the participants to make any corrections or add additional thoughts. As they spoke, I recorded their ideas and thoughts.
With this improved, interactive approach, overall workshop engagement was much higher in day 2.
a Miro board from the second workshop
reviewing the overall experience.
As part of discovery, we conducted a UX and content audit of dfat.gov.au and a selection of post websites. I conducted the UX portion of the audit in collaboration with another designer, assessing the usability, accessibility, findability, and UI. Together we compiled an audit report of our findings to share with DFAT. We created a set of criteria for evaluation and rated the level of impact each issue could have on users. For every issue identified, we provided detail about the potential user impact along with a recommendation to DFAT on how to address the issue.
a page from the UX audit illustrating UI issues identified on a post site
recruiting 20 participants in 4 different countries.
The project scope included up to 20 user interview/testing sessions across both the core and post websites, with 10 participants allotted to each.
I had a unique and interesting research challenge to solve: how might I recruit participants representative of all the possible user groups accessing DFAT websites, both in Australia and abroad?
For the core site sessions, DFAT requested we speak with a mixture of Australian citizens and non-citizens residing in Australia. The post sites posed another another recruitment challenge. DFAT wanted to speak to Australian citizens abroad AND foreign nationals seeking entry to Australia. With our recruitment platform, Askable, we were limited in the countries we could recruit from, creating a smaller pool of participants that met our requirements. In consultation with Askable, I selected the UK, India, and Canada to recruit post site participants.
The participant breakdown looked like this:
CORE SITE (testing dfat.gov.au)
5 Australian citizens or permanent residents who have resided or traveled overseas within the last 5 years
5 non-Australian nationals currently in Australia studying, working, or traveling temporarily
POST SITES (testing uk.embassy.gov.au, canada.embassy.gov.au or india.embassy.gov.au based on their location)
5 Australian citizens currently residing or traveling in the UK
3 Canadian nationals currently seeking entry to Australia for the purpose of study, work, travel, or migration
2 Indian nationals currently seeking entry to Australia for the purpose of study, work, travel, or migration
I created two versions of the screener to identify participants who met the above criteria, in combination with the default questions Askable uses to determine age, location, and English fluency. Participants were selected if they met the criteria, and then based on their age, location, and ethnic background. I intentionally curated a diverse group of participants representative of the vast audiences DFAT serves.
Recruitment at this scale brought a series of challenges: scheduling across time zones, participants cancelling sessions, requesting new times, or failing to respond to invites. In the end, we successfully conducted 19 total user sessions across the entire discovery program for both the core and post sites.
User sessions were a combination of interview questions and usability tasks. This way we could capture data to define user groups and understand how those users interact with the sites.
Core site participants tested dfat.gov.au, and post site participants tested the Australian embassy site for their respective country (UK, Canada, or India). I facilitated half the sessions, and my colleague facilitated the other half.
questions & usability tasks from the core site sessions
organising user data.
19 interviews left a mountain of data to sift through. Using Condens, I uploaded video from the sessions and transcribed each one. Data was organised according to themes that started to emerge from each session.
All data from core and post sessions was passed through two levels of synthesis. The first, a high-level grouping of data into common themes. I then broke down all the large data groupings into smaller ones, narrowing in on specific themes and patterns.
For example, from the label “Reactions to IA”, a smaller group of insights emerged related to confusing terminology, functionality, placement, and intuitiveness of the IA. I created a top-level theme called “Navigation”, and grouped all related insights underneath.
The scope for the discovery included a separate findings report for each platform, so I synthesised data from core and post sessions individually.
first & second rounds of synthesis applied to the core site
what we learned.
The user research I conducted, along with the insights from content and tech discovery, yielded these findings:
CORE SITE
The biggest user group accessing the site may not be the audience DFAT intends to reach.
Information cannot be found easily or quickly as a result of complicated user journeys.
Users do not access the majority of content available on DFAT web.
DFAT web functions as an unnecessary middleman, redirecting users to other government sites for information and services.
Outdated technology and lack of a clear content strategy has directly contributed to a poor, unintuitive user experience.
POST SITES
Post websites lack a strong sense of identity and purpose for Australians overseas to connect with.
Post sites are trying to reach too broad an audience.
Most content on post websites duplicates or deep links to other government websites, resulting in confusing user journeys.
Each post site is unique, but all share common pain points which lead to a poor user experience.
Lack of cohesion and outdated technology have directly contributed to poor user experience.
personas & journey maps.
Using insights from the research, I created personas and journey maps to represent the primary user groups. In total, 3 personas and 3 journey maps were created for the core site, with 4 personas and 3 journey maps for the post sites. These artefacts provided DFAT with a human-centred look at the goals, needs, and struggles of the different users accessing their sites. With this information, DFAT could make informed decisions about how to clarify the purpose and improve the experience across its ecosystem.
persona representing one user group of the core website
journey map depicting this user’s current journey through the site
bringing it all together.
As a team and in alignment with DFAT, we agreed to write individual reports that provided an in-depth look at all of our research along with an executive summary report that provided a high-level view of the top findings and recommendations. The executive summary was presented to high-level DFAT execs for final sign-off.
I led the effort to create the executive summary, and this was no small feat! To pull all the pieces together from over three months of discovery, I:
combined insights from all three streams (design, content, tech) across all the DFAT sites we reviewed in a way that was concise, easy to digest, and communicated the most important information at an executive level;
created a cohesive narrative for the document incorporating the top findings from each stream;
wrote summaries of the top design, content, and tech recommendations for the entire ecosystem;
designed the entire document from scratch in Figma;
collaborated closely with our content designer.
sample of pages from the executive summary report
project outcomes.
The executive summary and accompanying artefacts I created empowered DFAT with a holistic human-centred understanding of user interactions and journeys across their digital ecosystem. Stakeholders were equipped with user-based evidence which informed crucial business decisions and the direction for subsequent phases of the DFAT digital ecosystem program.
The research I conducted made a clear impact on the execs and stakeholders involved. The research provided, for the first time, quantitative data and qualitative insights about site users worldwide. Direct quotes and video clips illustrated real user experiences, giving stakeholders the opportunity to understand why improvements are required and building empathy for users in the process.