Unifying Policy Access: Designing a Single Source of Truth for the Public Service
Role: Design Strategy, Visual Design, Prototyping
Client: Finance Sector
Project: Instruction Manual Portal
Scrum Team: 1 Designer, Design Lead, Scrum Master, 4 Developers, Lead Developer
The Challenge: Fragmented Systems, Inefficient Access
Navigating government policy shouldn’t feel like solving a puzzle.
Public officers in Singapore rely on Instruction Manuals (IMs), the critical documents that shape how the government operates. Yet, finding the right version of a guide meant juggling different portals, leading to confusion, inefficiency, and the risk of using outdated information.
Key pain points included:
Disjointed Portals: Three separate systems with cluttered and outdated user interfaces.
Unclear Version Control: Difficulty tracking document updates.
Inconsistent Formatting: Documents and features followed disparate styles, creating confusion.
The goal was clear: transform this fractured landscape into a single, intuitive, and modern platform that empowers officers to access accurate information quickly and confidently. This case study explores how I - with guidance from my design lead - unified complex systems into a cohesive portal that balances sleek design with the precision required for public policy.
My Role & Approach
As the sole UX/UI designer in an Agile Scrum team, I was tasked with reimagining this fragmented experience by:
Leading end-to-end UX strategy, wireframing, and high-fidelity prototyping while adhering to Magnolia CMS’s technical constraints.
Collaborating closely with developers, ensuring feasibility without compromising design integrity.
Advocating for user-centric simplifications - reducing cognitive load while preserving system familiarity.
UX Strategy: Clarity Through Minimalism
The client requested for a modern design - sleek, elegant, and aligned with contemporary UX trends. With that being said, I incorporated:
Sleek Minimalism – Inspired by Stripe’s refined aesthetic, I employed soft shadows, sleek graphic elements, and subtle gradients to achieve a polished, contemporary feel.
Glassmorphism – Inspired by Apple’s UI, this technique uses subtle transparency and blur to create a sense of depth and sophistication without adding clutter.
By showcasing these trends, we aligned stakeholders on the portal’s vision while demonstrating our expertise. I then established three UX guiding principles: Accessibility, Recognition Over Recall and Visibility of System Status, to address the portal’s disjointed structure, while ensuring clarity and consistency in our approach.
Key Solutions & Design Decisions
1. A Unified Portal Experience
(Problem: Three Portals, One User Journey)
Previously, users toggled between disjointed systems, causing confusion. To create a seamless experience, I:
Merged three portals into one cohesive interface with consistent navigation and branding.
Introduced AI-powered search - scans all documents and generates summaries using GenAI to accelerate information retrieval.
Added adaptive filtering for role-based access (finance, IT, procurement, vendors).
Prototype of portal: AI-powered search and adaptive filtering
Preserving Personalisation
To ensure users retained a sense of ownership in the unified system, the client Director initially requested a personalised mega-menu, expecting it to enhance usability. After evaluation, we advised against it because:
Low user impact: Mega-menus are navigational tools, not typically personalised in enterprise systems (users prioritise quick access over customised layouts).
Technical complexity: Magnolia CMS’s templating system made dynamic menu customisation high-effort with limited ROI.
Solution: We proposed a "Favourites" system as a scalable alternative:
Users could bookmark frequently used IMs/Guides, surfacing them on their homepage.
Added a "Subscribe" feature for Theme updates, addressing the core need (awareness of changes).
The client director approved the pivot, praising the solution for being user-centric yet pragmatic.
Demo of “Favourites” feature, accessible via the home page and IM document
2. Simplified Document Navigation
(Pain point: "Policy documents have inconsistent formatting and are too dense.")
To improve readability:
Consistent formatting – A standardised layout for all document types.
Accessibility-first design: Proper typography, contrast, and spacing for long-form reading, and avoiding colour-only indicators.
Collapsible sections – Minimised scroll fatigue without losing context.
Sticky table of contents and headers – Persistent navigation to support Recognition Over Recall.
Responsive design, highlighting collapsible and sticky features
3. Version Timeline & Comparison
(Pain point: "Which document version is current?")
Policy updates are important to officers, so I introduced:
A visual version timeline – Inspired by SSO’s government platforms. The design includes a clear status to indicate the current version (Visibility of System Status).
Dynamic table of contents – Auto-highlights the user’s position as they scroll (Visibility of System Status).
Side-by-side comparison – Enables effortless comparison between versions.
Demo of version timeline and side-by-side comparison
Designing for Policy & People
This project proved that even compliance-heavy systems can be intuitive and modern. The redesigned portal streamlines document retrieval and reduces versioning errors, enhancing both efficiency and accuracy. Our stakeholders praised the result as an “elegant yet functional” solution that successfully balances user needs with policy requirements.
