Held annually on the last Sunday of October, is NSW Grandparents Day. The day celebrates the diversity of grandparent relationships across age groups, cultural backgrounds, and geographical locations. Whether it be grandparents, grand-friends, kin, or those who take on the role of a grandparent in their family or community, this day recognises their contributions.
The original Grandparents Day site was a small stand-alone website with campaign specific content. Campaign content differs to a regular website as it is intended to encourage the reader to take action and is often short term. Working in collaboration with our partners at the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), we undertook the process of reviewing, refining and migrating existing content, to its new home on nsw.gov.au/grandparents-day.
The process of migration
When we first engaged with our partners at DCJ, the process of migration was outlined. We needed to perform content and technical audit and uncover the business goals and objectives for the 2021 campaign content. We also needed to acquire all the media assets required to populate the new build.
Migrating the content provided an opportunity to revisit how the information would be displayed and consumed by the intended audience. This helped to ensure we delivered a positive experience for users.
The content audit identified 17 pages of existing content. Working through the content list, a page at a time, we were looking for the opportunity to consolidate, enhance or retire content no longer relevant to this year’s campaign. We also wanted to refine the user journey across the campaign pages to make it easier for customers to ‘seek, say and do’ what they need to with the content.
Accessibility, usability and diverse imagery
The page layout and user experience (UX) design was considered and work-shopped to ensure the pages and content were accessible, with easy-to-use page layout and flow. Once this was complete, the wireframe of the new webpages could begin.
Our focus on accessibility and usability during this stage in the process means that new and existing users can easily find events nearby, access resources or inspiring stories of Grandparent relationships, with minimal search time and clicks.
The creation of the wireframing was relatively straightforward. Though what took some time was the image usage, aligning to the 2021 campaign and NSW Government brand guidelines. After several iterations, we agreed upon a suite of images that represented authentic and diverse photos of real people. As a result, the pages feel more relatable, where people can see themselves or someone they know, reflected in the photos.
Collaboration delivers innovation and a successful migration
The team worked with developers to build a custom countdown widget to count down the days, hours and minutes until the day. This functionality now has potential to be duplicated across other pages on nsw.gov.au.
Working toward a set deadline to deliver in time for the event promotion, meant collaboration was key. The OneCX program team worked alongside DCJ’s Stronger Communities team, to navigate the approvals, production, and distribution processes. Using preview links, we were able to keep all stakeholders involved in the design process and provide real-time updates on the project build.
As go-live day approached, the team implemented the final changes, ready for publishing.
Spanning over two months from mid-August 2021, the migration was a success with new content launched in early October, ahead of Grandparent’s Day 2021.
Feedback from stakeholders since launch has been very positive, as we bring this site, all about human connection and the celebration of older people within our community, to the citizens of NSW. With just under 7000 users visiting the Grandparents Day pages, we’re proud to be enabling the connection and celebration of people.
‘It’s been a combined effort and great to see the wonderful collaboration across the teams.’
‘The branding is on point. It showcases a well-considered, well-designed set of pages for our citizens.’
Want to find out more?
NSW Grandparents Day is presented by the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ).
DCJ supports families and local community-based programs across NSW. DCJ provides more than 1.5 million Seniors Cards to eligible people in NSW.
For more information on DCJ’s Grandparent’s Day, you can get in touch with the team here.
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