Boat Licence Legacy Transformation
An easy to use and compliant service - the improvements Maritime and Citizens received
Key value added to Customers | Key Value Added to Maritime |
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In Summary: Transforming Maritime's Largest Licence in NSW
The NSW Boat Licence needed to be migrated to a new platform, as it’s old platform, Government Licencing System (GLS) was being decommissioned. The licence itself The NSW had not been changed in decades, with many quick fixes leading to a convoluted service that was difficult to maintain. The re-platforming provided an opportunity to provide improvements to both Maritime as a business, and NSW citizens as it’s customers. For my role, I led the UX Research and Service Design in order to create a more user friendly solution for all stakeholders engaged in the service. The Recognised Qualifications pathway was opted as the initial launch to bring straight through processing to Maritime NSW for the first time.
19 interviews to find a choose your own adventure like licence: Making sense of chaos in research
To understand the current state, we hosted workshops with stakeholders from all state agencies involved in the process, from the Service NSW team members in service centres to Maritime’s licensing staff behind the scenes.
This was required due to the large-scale size of the licence, and as we researched we discovered a more vast experience and back-end than originally anticipated. This triggered additional interviews in order to capture every facet of the experience, extending our discovery timeline longer than original.
This was necessary because we had no holistic reference from Maritime on how the licence operates.
Synthesis revealed the true extent of flexibility available to customers in order to receive their licence. Customers have full control over how, when and where they get their boat licence, in that they can start on one pathway and cut to another half way through to qualify for the licence. This increased the complexity in exchanges between groups of people and systems that needed to be accommodate for.
In the end, we sorted the insights into 3 primary streams defined by their different ‘ways in’:
1. The Logbook
2. An Authorised Training Provider
3. Recognised Qualifications
Advocating for inclusivity: Designing for every citizen in NSW
I secured the broad scope of stakeholders in our UX research to represent the diversity of the state. and be as inclusive and accessible as possible. This included created sub-process maps to accommodate our main journey maps for regional, english second-language segments, people with disabilities and underage and older customers who have additional requirements to the journey. This was important to respond to the requirements of the brief to reduce reliance on in person services, ensure the solution closely aligned to user needs and support the diversity NSW is home to.
Strategically starting small against the status quo
Strategic selection of the smallest volumes first
I supported the idea to do the Recognised Qualifications journey first. This was selected as the initial launch due to its smaller volume size. It was already riskier selecting Maritime’s largest volume authorisation, however external decisions impacted the roadmap. Therefore, this choice was against external pressure to deliver the largest volume transaction first, but what was best for the product and team. By launching on a smaller scale, we were able to monitor and validate the new system at a lower risk, catching issues on a small volume transaction before exposing Maritimer highest volume authorisation to an untested system.
Bridging the digital gap to overcome change reluctance
A challenge faced was how Maritime had not undergone any major transformation recently, and had no experience with digital projects. They initially wanted a ‘like for like’ solution and needed to be brought of the journey of what was happening so they could better understand the value in the project. By recognising their lack of experience and mindset, I was able to better communicate with them to enable their understanding. This mitigated fears of change and enable better collaboration between the agencies.
Iteration for Inclusivity - providing tailored solutions for vulnerable people
We tested our recognised qualifications journey with low-fidelity screens with 2 Maritime SME's and 2 customers. We received positive feedback but identified a discrepancy in how citizens can access the service during testing. I prioritised addressing this, as the state Government it poses a reputational risk to the business.
This prompted me to complete a more exhaustive accessibility audit to provide more support to those who know English as a second language. I introduced logic to divert customers to service centres of translation services in scenarios with many errors or inconsistencies, this brings intuition and accessibility to the new design, per the brief.
Reimagining legacy services to set sail for digital optimisations
This project began as a necessary migration from the legacy Government Licensing System, but it became a chance to rethink a service that had remained largely unchanged for decades. What started as a complex, patchwork system evolved into a more streamlined and sustainable experience that benefits Maritime NSW as a business and the citizens who rely on it.
I lead the UX Research and Service Design to reframe the problem from a simple “lift and shift” into an opportunity for sustainable, meaningful improvement. This project enabled straight-through processing for the first time within Maritime NSW, demonstrating immediate value while setting the foundation for future transformation. This work not only improved usability and efficiency but also shifted internal perspectives on what digital services could achieve.
