Insurance

Attorney General’s Department

USER TESTING - EXISTING WEBSITE / DESIGN PROTOTYPE / STAGING
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Stage One

Existing website testing

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Stage Two

Design Testing

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Stage Three

Staging Testing

About the Company

The Department created a new website to inform people about the laws and risks of reproductive surrogacy in Australia. They work to maintain and improve Australia’s law and justice framework.

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Objectives

  • Enhance User Experience: Identify and address key usability issues on the website.
  • Simplify Communication: Improve content clarity, ensuring users clearly understand critical information.
  • Maximise Engagement: Understand user motivations and barriers when interacting with the site’s themes and content.

Our Approach – Discovery and Research

We partnered with the client to refine the project brief and focus on their biggest challenge: comprehension. We recognised the importance of assembling a diverse group of testers, including:

  • Personal Stakeholders: Individuals personally exploring surrogacy or supporting someone who is.
  • Professional Audiences: Researchers and professionals with an academic or policy-related interest in surrogacy.

This ensured the insights we gathered addressed the needs of all key user groups.

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Our Approach – Testing and Analysis

To uncover actionable insights, we conducted comprehensive user testing sessions:

  • Unmoderated Sessions: Testers recorded their screen while completing tasks, providing natural, unscripted feedback.
  • Moderated Sessions: Facilitators guided users through tasks, asking probing questions to gain deeper insights into mental models and priorities.

All participants completed a post-test survey to validate and enrich our findings.

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Findings

  • Navigation Challenges: Testers struggled to find essential content due to unclear navigation and poor findability.
  • Content Skimming & Avoidance:
    • Large blocks of text were often skipped, especially when paired with complex links to UN reports or legal documents.
    • Many users found paragraphs too dense or overwhelming, causing them to miss critical information.
  • Perceived Tone:
    • Users considering surrogacy felt the website came across as judgmental or even discouraging, rather than supportive and empathetic.
    • As a result, some users abandoned the site in favour of commercial providers, even if those were less trustworthy sources.
  • Misaligned Expectations: Some participants expected practical, country-specific advice, similar to the Smartraveller website, which fell outside the Department’s scope.
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The Results

Immediate Changes

  • Improved navigation and content findability by restructuring key sections of the site.
  • Adjusted tone and language to be more empathetic and accessible.

Follow-Up Testing Results

  • Post-revisions, a second round of testing confirmed significant improvements in:
    • User clarity and confidence when engaging with the site’s content.
    • Positive sentiment towards the website as a reliable source of information.

Why This Matters

This project highlighted a critical lesson for government websites: practical empathy builds trust. By understanding how users process sensitive and complex topics, organisations can improve not only their website’s usability but also its credibility and engagement.