Content Design for Government Services (MyLegacy)
MyLegacy.gov.sg is a one-stop government portal for end-of-life matters— which includes legacy planning, palliative care, death registration and estate settlement. The website includes consolidated information from 14 different government agencies, and a legacy planning vault where users can record and share important documents.
CHALLENGE
There were at least 24 different government websites for end-of-life information. Some content issues were:
information discrepancy and factual errors between agencies
content that was hard to read or understand
SOLUTION
I led the content design and research for the articles on MyLegacy so users can have a consolidated platform for all end-of-life information and services.
HOW I HELPED
Conducted a content audit of 24 government websites and worked with agency partners to correct information errors
Led content discovery and research
Writing and content design for 37 government articles
Problem — Conducting a content audit
As the first UX Writer and Content Strategist for MyLegacy, I had to first understand what are the available end-of-life information that citizens were already using before creating content guides for the portal. To better understand the issues and define the problem, I spent time to:
conduct a content audit of 24 different government websites for end-of-life information and services
organised and labelled information errors in a spreadsheet
worked with project managers and agency representatives to correct information errors
Content discovery and research
Following Sarah Richards’ Content Design principles, I worked on content discovery and audience research before I started writing the articles. For My Legacy’s content to succeed, we needed to understand:
who the audiences are
what they want from us
and how to speak to them.
FINDING THE USER’S VOCABULARY —
We looked through research interview transcripts, internet forums and comments to gather a list of vocabulary that people used to describe certain government services.
At the same time, we also used SEO consoles like Google Trends and SEMrush to analyse search data and keywords.
This gave us a start to strategise:
what topics to prioritise
the keywords to include in article headlines and introductions
Content deliverables
After 2 months of discovery, research and prioritisation meetings, MyLegacy focused on 5 main topics:
Legacy planning
Palliative care
Reporting a death
Funeral matters
Estate settlements.
For the next few months, I spent hours writing, editing and seeking clearance for each of the 37 articles. To ensure reader comprehension, we:
used the Hemingway app to maintain a reading age of Grade 12 and below
conducted usability testing on prioritised articles to gather feedback
Read my writing samples here:
Outcome
After a year spent engaging agency partners to correct information errors, conducting content discovery, writing and editing… I managed to:
write 37 government articles according to content design and usability principles
maintain a reading age of Grade 12 and below for the website
work with agency partners to edit and correct 6 government websites to make sure their information is consistent and factual.