Led the future-state service design for the complete transformation of Australia's passport service — defining the citizen journey vision and co-designing with business, technology and frontline staff.
Starting with primary customer research — intercepting customers in passport offices in Sydney and Melbourne — I gained insights into what drives customer pain points and inbound service demand. I also gained insights from other nations' passport teams and Australian government agencies, and created a set of current-state customer journeys that challenged the internal view of customer satisfaction while explaining issues with internal efficiency.
Using evidence and outputs from primary research, I ran a comprehensive series of staff workshops where the internal aspirations for a modernised passport service could be facilitated and captured. Synthesising the outputs, I delivered a clear, bottom-up view of organisational ambition and took this to endorsement by the executive group. The co-design was iterative and delivered a vision using Guiding Principles, Customer Journeys and validated customer and staff experience prototypes.
The agreed vision and design artefacts — including detailed prototypes — enabled effective collaboration with solution architects to plan a roadmap for delivery. Speaking directly with the new Chief Executive, I communicated the benefits model and worked with architects to finalise a series of work packages. As delivery began I managed and defined the benefits, working through how the experience could be delivered within technical constraints while continually testing with customers.
I worked alongside the developer team (using DevOps) on the details of user stories (PBIs) and refining mocked-up designs as technical constraints and opportunities became known. I stepped in wherever needed — including PDF templates and rapid-turnaround customer testing when new solutions required validation at short notice.
A number of issues required organisational alignment — I engaged deeply with relevant stakeholders, navigating conversations about legislation and technical photo specification standards. I supported required legislative change (removal of an exemption from the Electronic Transactions Act), persuaded reticent stakeholders about the legal position regarding signatures, and removed misunderstandings regarding ISO standards on passport photos.
"Jon is a thoughtful and artistic design leader. He manages people well, gets everyone rallied around a vision and gives the right encouragement to get the team there. His positivity keeps the team buoyant and his advice is worthwhile to senior stakeholders and new recruits alike. If you're looking for someone with the full spectrum of human-centred design skills — you've found him."
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