Re-designing NRW online portal for families
Expanding and rethinking the structure of a family web portal to make it more user-centered and inclusive for families and family experts.
Role
Expert lead and Service Designer (Service, UX, UI Design)
Client
Ministerium für Kinder, Jugend, Familie, Gleichstellung, Flucht und Integration (MKJFGFI) des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW)
Duration & location
Sept 2021 - October 2022
Germany
More info
CHALLENGE
How might we make it easier for professionals and families with children up to the beginning of their careers, to find and use the “Guter Start - portal” to locate valuable services around them?
CONTEXT AND THE STATUS QUO
The region of NRW developed the “Guter Start” website years ago. “Guter Start” aimed to centralize hundreds of valuable services for families, with children until 6 years old, in a single portal. Nowadays, the challenge is to expand the website with services for families with children up to the stage when they start to work.
Guter Start functions as a centralized template that municipalities in the region can quickly adapt.
Till this day, more than 80 municipalities in NRW are using the “Guter Start” portal to compile the family services in their city.
GUTER START KÖLN (Status: at the beginning of the project)
Not user-friendly. No focus on diversity and inclusion of non-binary families. No focus on accessibility.
THE OPPORTUNITIES
The website will be expanded and include offers for families with children up to the stage when they start their working life. Categories, content, language, and logic behind the website need to be analyzed and restructured from a user perspective. This gives us great opportunities to do it right.
Guiding the client through a participative process including final users, experts, service providers, municipalities, and the ministerium in different steps of the process.
Adopting a user-centered approach and getting in contact with the different target groups.
Using a language that is easy to understand for everyone.
Adopting an inclusive lens when defining the experience for all the diversity of families out there (Regenbogen families, families with children with disabilities, families in difficult situations, etc.)
Guiding the client in their process of learning how to work Agile and iterative.
DESIGN THINKING AS APPROACH:
HOW WILL WE WORK TOGETHER IN AN INNOVATIVE, PARTICIPATIVE AND USER-CENTERED WAY
STRATEGY AND KICK-OFF WORKSHOPS WITH CLIENT AND STAKEHOLDERS
Build a shared vision
10 steps to the goal
Who should be involved in this process?
What do you mean by participatory, agile and user-centric?
Opportunities and challenges
DISCOVERY PHASE: USER & EXPERTS INTERVIEWS / DESK RESEARCH / SURVEYS
DEFINITION PHASE
RE-DEFINITION OF THE NEW TOPICS & SUBTOPICS TO BE USED AS FILTERS ON THE WEBSITE
DESIGN AND TESTING
This phase included the design of Click-dummy prototypes of main pages in Figma, testing sessions with 5 users and continuous feedback loops with the client, developers, and stakeholders.
Testing the Figma prototypes in 1:1 interviews with 5 users, to find out answers to:
Are the topics and subtopics understandable for users? Do they include all important topics for families?
Do parents find it easy to search using the new age ranges defined for the site?
Is the new UI- and UX-Design more user-friendly? What can be still improved?
Do users find the filters? Can they understand them and use them easily? Are the filters helping users to refine their search?
FINAL DESIGN AND DETAILED HANDOVER FOR CLIENT AND DEVELOPERS
CLIENT’S FEEDBACK AT THE END OF THE PROCESS
“This way of working was totally new for me.
I knew what I wanted at the end of the process, but I didn’t know how to get there. You created and implemented a structured process that made that possible. I am super happy with the results, it is a big leap in quality.”
✏️✨
ifok Team: Vanessa Espinosa, Sven Grillo, Yasmin Hameed.
Extended team from client’s and partners’ side: MKJFGFI, d.nrw, Municipality of Düsseldorf and Gummersbach, BMS-Consulting.