Redesigning institutional communication for non-expert users
Context
The TCE-GO website serves citizens, professionals, and public servants, but relies heavily on technical and legal terminology.
Initial direction from stakeholders points to visual redesign and content simplification — without yet a shared understanding of user needs.
The Challenge
Institutional websites often prioritize internal language over citizen comprehension, creating cognitive overload and disengagement. The risk is solving a visual problem while the real issue lies in content structure and mental models.
Access Patterns & Initial Signals
Early analysis revealed a strong asymmetry in access patterns:
70–80% of traffic comes from anonymous users seeking public information, while 20–30% requires authentication across fragmented systems.
This indicated a fundamental product tension: designing simultaneously for non-expert citizens and technical users with recurring, high-stakes tasks.
Rather than addressing this as a purely visual problem, I framed it as a content, navigation, and architecture challenge — requiring distinct mental models and levels of complexity.
My approach
Before proposing layouts, my focus will be on:
Mapping user types and intent
Auditing technical language and content hierarchy
Identifying where simplification is safe vs legally constrained
Defining content principles to guide redesign decisions
This ensures layout changes are driven by clarity, not aesthetics.
Why this matters
Visual redesign without content strategy often reproduces the same problems in a new interface.
This approach aims to reduce friction, increase trust, and make institutional information usable for non-expert citizens.
Stats
Ongoing — Discovery phase