Company
Department of Customer Service
Deliverables
Problem Framing
Concept Design
Hi-fidelity Prototyping
Usability Testing
Timeline
4 weeks
Team
1 Service Designer
1 Product Product
Notifying government organisation after a name change
Approximately 19,500 customers change their name annually through Births, Deaths, and Marriages (BDM). Currently, after changing their legal name, they must manually notify every associated government agency, which is a lengthy and unclear process. This project aims to streamline the procedure by allowing customers to promptly inform multiple government agencies of their name change. It serves as a foundation for a broader initiative to digitize the notification process, enabling future customers to notify relevant organizations efficiently.
I joined this project after the proposed solution was decided. Collaborating with a senior service designer, I helped create the prototype, conducted usability testing, and refined the product until its launch.
Problem statement
Customers find it tedious and time-consuming to notify government agencies of their name change because they need to navigate through various government agency sites to get the right information and forms to start the process.
Customer research
To understand the experience of notifying organisations once their name had been legally changed and to verify our assumptions, our team conducted qualitative and quantitative testing, which involved 10 virtual interviews and 103 participants doing a survey and card sorting activity.
Key insights:
Significant time spent manually notifying agencies of a name change
The inconvenience of individually notifying multiple government agencies and private organisations
Applicants notified organisations based on their personal objectives, such as updating passport with the intention to travel.
Participants preferred a checklist over a fully automated system, as it provides a sense of control and enhances reassurance and security regarding their information.
Opportunity
HMW streamline the process of notifying organizations after the change of name while still giving customers some sense of ‘control’?
Project goal
Inform and educate customers of their obligations following a name change
Offer a step-by-step guide to the customer about the process, the documents to provide and the agencies they need to inform about their name change.
Give customers the option to receive guidance by email.
User flow
Based on customer interviews, following a formal Change of Name process, customers favour an online navigation form that provides all the necessary information for notifying agencies about a name change.
By mapping out the user flow, It demonstrates the screens the user will be seeing, steps where the user needs to make a decision and the action required by the user to move forward into the flow.
Concepts exploration
After consulting with internal content, technical and design SMEs, we are advised to change the whole layout and use components from Digital NSW Design System to create consistency and be part of the NSW Government product ecosystem.
User testing feedback
We conducted A/B testing with 30 recent name-change customers using UsabilityHub, and remote testing with 11 customers on Teams. We observed various customer behavior patterns.
Section ignored and found confusing:
8/11 customers ignored this section.
6/11 found this section confusing and irrelevant, as they have already changed their name.
Rewording is needed to better guide public users to the correct information.
The functionality of nomination:
8/11 customers wouldn’t be nominating.
Considering the effort and benefit of this nomination feature, our team decided to remove this for MVP.
Confusion Over Clickable Links:
8/11 customers find the callouts useful and easy to read, though some mistake them for clickable links.
To improve readability and reduce confusion, we decided to change these to in-page alert components.
Customers disregard CSAT section:
9/11 would not use the detailed CSAT to provide feedback
Consequently, we removed it from the MVP and retained the simple thumbs up/thumbs down CSAT on each page to avoid redundancy.
Solution
Understanding post-name change obligations is no longer a hassle
Step 1: Customers who have changed their name recently will receive an email with a hyperlink from Births, Death and Marriages, which will direct customers to this landing page. This allows the users to be informed about the steps involved.
Step 2: The user is prompted to choose the government agencies they would like to get information on for the notification process and forms
Step 3: The user is then shown information and forms of how to notify relevant agencies. The user is also able to download a checklist for each agency, provided they would like to have a hard copy to tally their progress.
Step 4: Information for notifying other agencies (such as private organisations) is then presented to users. For forms and documents that require certification, users are offered a hyperlink whereby they can look up the closest JP by putting in their postcode.
Results
Making information available to customers in one place.
Reducing the time taken for customers to prepare documents and navigate through different processes
80% Adoption rate
Closing notes
This is just the first step toward a broader plan to digitize the name change notification process, allowing customers to notify relevant organizations with a simple ping in the future.
Our team is also exploring how Digital Identity could further streamline the process, though this is currently out of scope. We look forward to improving the name change experience with the NSW Government!