Waltham Forest Council website
Content design and information architecture work for redesigned local authority website.
Problem
Ah, local council websites—a veritable quirk of modern living.
They have a reputation for being sprawling repositories of information that aren’t very usable and make it a tad tricky to find ‘that thing’ you need to get your thing done, get the hell outta there, and get on with the rest of your life.
So, what if a council website could make things a lot easier to understand, navigate through, and use?
I was interested in exploring the answer to that question. Which is lucky, because Waltham Forest was redesigning its website as part of a digital transformation project, and they hired me to help out.
Who would have thought that community and living could involve so much?
What a load of rubbish… was an initial idea for a revised page title here, which didn’t make it pass round 1 of user research.
Get the gist?
- Words… lots of words
- Overload of options
- Non-intuitive grouping, organisation and labelling of services and tasks
Solution
I wireframed and tested more clean and intuitive groupings of information, based on tasks and creating greater distinction between everyday citizens, businesses, and more specialist audiences.
Results
Cleaner, more navigable and accessible content.
