My Aged Care website

With over 4 million Australians now over 65 and expected to live into their 80s, there are more people needing aged care than ever before. But many prefer to struggle independently for as long as possible. No-one wants to lose their independence. Many fear their choices, and don’t understand the range of possibilities. The challenge is to help Australians make sense of the aged care landscape, understand what supports are available, and connect people with the right services to help them live independently for longer: everything from subsidised travel to doctor's appointments, to help with housework if you're injured.

Through a rigorous human-centred design process, we worked with the community to understand their fears, needs, and motivations. The solution is a website that resets users’ expectations and assumptions about aged care, making it clear this is about more than just going to a nursing home. It gives users an overview of the landscape, but also allows them to drill down into (many!) complex details and requirements in a way that is not overwhelming. It helps them assess their needs, compare services, and steps them through the aged care application process in a way that is humane, supportive and reassuring.

This project has helped Australians feel empowered to make informed decisions about their care. It has helped change the national conversation about aged care, creating better outcomes, and rebuilding trust and transparency to address the issues surfaced in the media and Royal Commission. User feedback has been overwhelmingly positive with a measurably improved experience. - 70% now find the information easy to understand and are clearer on what to do next. - 77% intend to return and would recommend the site. "It's really good, it's very clear and it's sequentially answering the things that are coming up in my head."

The platform provides multiple approaches aimed at helping people build understanding and take action. Much of it involves a strategic layering of information, along with specialised tools like the Fee Estimator and Make a Referral feature for health specialists. The new ‘Apply for an Assessment Online’ feature is a prime example of the HCD approach. We took a service that was primarily delivered over the phone because of its complexity. We spoke with users and call centre staff, we listened to support calls to understand the problems people face. Our challenge was to turn the complexities of that manually guided process into an interactive process. To do this, we continuously asked questions like: “How can we ease the burden on the user?” “Where might someone experience doubt, and how can we alleviate that?” “How can we inform without overwhelming?” By going through this process of reducing friction we were able to ensure the experience is intuitive, supportive, engaging, respectful of the user’s time, attention, and emotional wellbeing. The response since launch has been overwhelmingly positive, in a way that is rare for this type of process that is often considered to be a necessary burden to go through.