Coming soon: the makeover reveal for data.govt.nz

In September, we spoke about the makeover work that would be happening on data.govt.nz.

We’re excited to be able to announce that it’s very nearly finished – from early 2019, the site will look quite different, and have some more exciting (we think) changes under the hood.

The key changes

The first thing you’ll likely notice is that the site’s colours will be different, with a focus on lots of white space to help users move through it more easily.

We’ve already changed the top-level navigation to reflect user tasks, and will continue to work on iterating and improving it, based on feedback.

We’ll also be using colours to support navigation.

Please note – these colours are indicative, and may change.

Over time, you’ll start to see content that can expand or collapse, making pages easier to navigate through, and allowing you to see more than one level of content.

Open sourcing our pattern library

A large part of the work refreshing the look and feel of data.govt.nz has happened under the hood, as we’ve created a pattern library for the site, made up of all its interface elements.

We’ve made it open source, and we’ll continue to add to and refine it over time. It’s also serving as the basis for an All-of-Government pattern library, which the Government Information Service wrote about earlier this year.

The benefits of an open sourced, All-of-Government pattern library are multiple, including:

• ‘baking in’ accessibility and usability
• cutting down on costs (as each website doesn’t need to produce its own pattern library from scratch)
• good quality documentation, and easy-to-use patterns and components
• easier prototyping, and faster times to market.

Our content strategy and style guide

We’ve also been working to develop and finalise – as much as one can ever finalise living documents – a content strategy and style guide for the website (excluding the data catalogue itself). They’ll guide how we’ll create and sustain good web content and ensure each piece of content adds value.

We’ve finalised the content strategy and will publish it in the near future.

We’ve also very nearly finalised our style guide, which we’ll publish too. It’s based on the Govt.nz style guide, used and adapted by other All-of-Government websites, as well as a range of websites across government. The guide’s released under a CC-BY 4.0 licence, so anyone can use, share or adapt it, and it’s backed up by user research and testing.