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NSW Automation Guide

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1. Context

Digital NSW, a NSW Government agency, guides digital infrastructure policy.  As a content designer there, I collaborated across functions to design and deliver the NSW Automation Guide. At its inception, the guide aimed to support the public sector in understanding automation and implementing it in their organisations. The result reflects 9 months of consultation and design iteration. The team included enterprise architects, a developer, a UX designer and me.

2. Challenges

When I joined the project halfway through development, there were many content problems:

  • Extensive voice, style, grammar and structural issues.
  • Low readability score. The resource spanned more than 120 pages and was dominated by technical jargon.
  • Lacked structure and was difficult to navigate.
  • It lacked purpose. The resource was created without identifying users or their needs.
  • There was no consideration for the content’s relationship with the NSW Government Design System.
3. My goals
  • Eradicate repetition. Reduce word count and aerate the information.
  • Align the voice, tone, brand, and accessibility standards to the Australian Government Style Manual.
  • Retroactively introduce user needs and job stories.
  • Define content patterns and information architecture.
  • Exploit the NSW Government Design System to transform the pages into a structured, purposeful resource.
4. My process
  • Conducted extensive content reviews and rewrites. Implemented active voice, structure, logic and content usability concepts.
  • Educated subject matter experts about how people read online. Demonstrated content optimisations and restructured the guide into modules.
  • Advocated for the user. Introduced job stories at the beginning of modules.
  • Aligned the content’s tone, voice and style with the Australian Government Style Manual.
  • Formatted references, links and checked sources.
  • Collaborated with UX and graphic design on all Figma designs using the NSW Government Design System.
  • Worked closely with the front-end engineer to publish to the Drupal environment.

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