The Healthy Eating Advisory Service (HEAS) is a free, government supported service providing evidence-based nutrition and healthy eating support to a wide range of organisations. They include a panel of nutritional experts who assist with providing advice to the community, and positively contribute to the health and wellbeing of all Victorians.
To date, HEAS has provided free and tailored support to over 3,100 organisations, across 99% of local government areas and reaching 1.3 million Victorians.
Their vision is to become the authoritative body in healthy eating, and benchmark and provide accreditation for VIC organisations.
What we wanted to achieve
In two years time HEAS will be the continued experts in providing healthy eating support and advice. We have expanded responsibility and reach both in Victoria and nationally for delivering tools to support (and monitor) the relevant government guidelines. The website is the hub of the information we provide delivering an intuitive and engaging experience to all users. We are represented as a modern, must use service when improving food and drink provision.
The Brief
We were approached by HEAS to completely reimagine their website, and to optimise the way users navigated through the site. To work with such a reputable body and given free-reign with how we approached research and the design made this an incredibly rewarding project to work on.
HEAS highlighted that they wanted to create an intuitive to use website which kept users engaged, and a website that facilitated growth of target users. This was especially challenging due to the diverse range of resources provided on the website, with some material being quite niche and targeted for specific user groups.
Healthy Eating Advisory Service
Key questions we and the wider team had were:
“How do we cater to our users that are on the same journey but are at different stages of that journey?”
“What is the best way to showcase all of our content/resources to a user without all the detail and having to navigate through multiple pages/clicks to get the information they need?”
“How can we create an advanced search for our content and our recipes?”
Discovery & Design
We were very fortunate to run a day-long discovery workshop with the HEAS team. This kick-off workshop involved collaborating with HEAS’s project managers, head of marketing and nutritional experts to create general consensus on core business goals, project agenda, existing website pain points and tackling foreseeable feasibility concerns.
A further ecosystem mapping workshop with HEAS stakeholders team helped us gain a thorough understanding of the internal complexities of the project and highlight core user types.
This workshop aims to establish a shared understanding of the website’s goals and challenges
Ecosystem mapping
Visualise the website’s interaction with other platforms and touchpoints
Top Task analysis
Defining the key tasks user’s want to take when visiting the website
User research
Gather direct feedback and insights from target audience
Open card sort
Understand how users categorise website information
Closed card sort
Evaluate existing website navigation structure based on user understanding
Stakeholder workshops
Leveraging stakeholder knowledge to better understand the project
We analysed user behavior (hundreds strong!) to prioritise features. Recipes were king for most, while case studies were managers’ domain. This, along with website analytics, informed our information architecture and core navigation.
Accurate terms were key due to the legal nature of the site. Card sorting (open & closed) with the HEAS team and users helped us define clear product categories.
This user focus ensures the navigation aligns with users’ needs, making it easy to find what they need.
“Absolutely delighted with the services provided by the entire Sod team. Bright minds, technical brilliance, ‘above and beyond’ account management and a contemporary approach to all things digital. Sod are doing some really special things”
Amy Woodley-Davis, Head of Marketing and Communications, Nutrition Australia
