NSW Government - Design System

Creating a foundational Design System to unify NSW Gov digital assets

While the NSW Government had a comprehensive set of digital brand guidelines, there were substantial inconsistencies in how these guidelines were being applied across the various Government Department websites.

To address this problem, the Department of Customer Service enlisted Pollen to help create an overarching Design System to normalise design consistency across NSW.Gov sites, to accelerate project delivery, and uplift the quality of digital outputs.

Working closely with the user experience and design teams within the NSW Government, we conducted a department-wide audit to collate the required patterns for the design system. Using the new NSW Digital Design Guidelines as the foundation, we set about designing the various patterns including main navigation, feature headers, new article cards, sidebar navigation and more.

Responsibilities

  • Project lead
  • Assisting with UI Design

Activities

  • Facilitating Gov agencies
  • Design Art Direction
  • Design System structure
  • Design System documentation
  • Research advising

Foundational Design System

It was important that the Design System was flexible and able to be customised by the various agencies within the NSW Gov. Leveraging consistent, WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, components we provided customisable elements to enable agencies to showcase their own branding. Along with this we provided documentation and guidance on how to best use the Design System. This was leveraged by the internal development team as well as content creators within the NSW Government.

””Our increased 2.1 accessibility requirements were tested with empathy and compassion with participants with a diverse range of needs.

Sharni AllenFormer Director - NSW Design System

The team

  • Victoria Koon – UI Designer
  • Carmine Mastrantone – UX Director
  • Ann Luu – Senior Producer