Gov.bc.ca is the BC provincial government's main communication channel to its 4.8m constituents. It’s a major gateway for every ministry in the provincial government to engage with the public. 1500+ public servants help push and modify content to its 30,000 pages. Gov.bc.ca's visual design language is also the key look and feel for every government website/application for the government; whatever changes are done on the main website, every ministry will eventually follow it and view it as the blueprint. Our team was tasked with the behemoth of a challenge to redesign and modernize this very important website. In 2020, the deputy ministry mandated to push for modernization in all applications and websites — gov.bc.ca included.
Problem
There are a lot of KPIs that needed to be met for the success of gov.bc.ca's redesign. Here are a few of them:
Mobile usage grew from 20% in 2017 to over 50% in 2021, yet the existing design was desktop focused.
Users struggled to find the content they were looking for because the pages were cluttered. This was a problem during the pandemic.
But the real challenge was how to design the website: the whole site ran on an internal CMS tool like Wordpress.
Our team had to redesign gov.bc.ca in such a way that seamlessly translated page content from the existing design to the updated one without breaking any pages.
Furthermore, our team had a unique position where we had ownership of several eco systems (gov.bc.ca, the internal CMS, and the BC Design system). All three products feed into each other and the redesign of gov.bc.ca was pivotal to maintaining trust so that our team can be the blueprint for every ministry to look up to. We had to succeed.
Outcome
The redesign was a success and opened opportunities on our team. Our designs paved way to become the standard across government. To this day, multiple ministries rely on our work to stay cohesive in web standards and practice. Site readability and usability metrics improved with users reporting that they were able to find information 3x quicker—especially for mobile. We were able to hit the metrics we sought to hit and surpassed them. Our team members (myself included) gained access to other circles in government. I was invited to help write design courses, lead design workshops, and become a panelist of various government design initiatives.