How do you make aged care easier to access and understood by all?
Besides the confusing government funding packages, perplexing industry jargon there is also the hard fact that most people don’t even want to think about aged care unless they have to. Thus the focus was simple things done well.
With a range of different service offerings suited to a broad spectrum of people, we designed, prototyped and tested a simplified navigation that allowed people to find the information and services they needed. Tools and calculators to help people figure out the costs of these essential services. All delivered through an AA accessible design system.
After analysing the key tasks a person would wish to achieve and the content we needed to structure, we decided on a fairly flat navigation hierarchy with a limited set of options that is clear and forgiving if someone wasn’t sure. This tested well.
To design well, we needed to create a design system that contains all the visual elements of the website. The design system must transmit the how, but also the why, so that the elements are consistent on their own, but specially together. Also despite what some people may say about an ageing population it is essential for brands to be constantly youthful. Why? Because of you are youthful you have a future. You own tomorrow.
Lastly we must never forget to think about how the people we are deigning for are feeling. Confused, frightened, powerless are a few commonly associated emotions when thinking about aged care. So we made it easy, we took all of the complicated information and created clear and transparent calculators and questionnaires. This way the technology did all the hard work and left people feeling empowered and supported.
Lesson: Design is never done.
Design is the art of continuous problem solving, an active cycle of investigation and validating needs, crafting and developing ideas and creating solutions. You won’t get it right first time, test and learn.