Case study: Improved content design: Canada.ca design system

By reading GC Task Success Survey comments for the Submit and Employment Insurance report task, the team at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) was able to spot an issue that they believed could be improved through minor content design changes.

Problem to solve: the reporting link was hard to find

A common complaint was that the reporting link was hard to find on the Employment Insurance reporting page.

“Finding the sign-in homepage link is a challenge”

There was an inline link to begin a report in the middle of a long paragraph.
The primary call-to-action button was after serveral lengthy paragraphs of text.

What they did

As a team, they:

hypothesized issues impacting sign-in findability
- from previous research, the team knew that inline links are easily missed as users scroll web pages
- long paragraphs of secondary content were impacting the findability of the call to action button
- the primary call-to-action button text was weak
prototyped simple changes using content design (what to include, headings, button colour and call to action)
- removed inline links
- collapsed secondary content (like the privacy statement) to make the primary button more visible
- changed the colour and size of the primary button to increase visibility for this super task
- changed button text from “Continue to the Internet Reporting Service” to “Submit your report by internet”
- minor text changes to H2 headings
A/B tested and measured impact of changes
implemented changes and monitored comments after the change

Outcomes

For users

increased click-through on sign-in button
decreased time spent on page (~200 user hours saved / week)

For the team

acted on survey comments, socialized and leveraged GC Task Success survey comments
learned to use A/B testing and can now apply the skill to more complex problems

View the result

Learn more

Page details

Date modified:: 2023-04-05

Language selection

Search