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South Australian Government

In 2021, through Atomix, I was embedded with the South Australian Government across the Department of Premier and Cabinet, SA Health, the Electoral Commission SA (ECSA), and the Department of Energy and Mining. I worked as a UX and service designer across five citizen-facing digital products and one internal service mapping engagement.

Client Government of South Australia
Role UX and Service Designer
Services
Service DesignProduct DesignUser Research
Year 2021
South Australian Government cover

Overview

Every project followed the same process: research and service design first, then design, then testing, before anything was built. Where products were live, we validated against both business and user requirements before signing off.

South Australian Government

Home Quarantine App (SA Health)

Led UX design for a COVID-19 compliance app that verified home quarantine adherence through location tracking and facial recognition check-ins. SA Health regulations were the source material and my job was translating those into flows that people in stressful circumstances could follow without needing support.

I owned the full end-to-end flow design and worked closely with the dev team throughout build, making sure what shipped matched the designed intent and flagging where technical constraints required design decisions to be revisited.

South Australian Government detail

Exemption status dashboard (SA Health)

Designed the end-to-end flow for COVID-19 border exemption applications and status tracking. The dashboard had to handle multiple states (pending, approved, declined) across a wide range of exemption categories, each with different eligibility rules.

Stakeholder sessions with SA Health were ongoing. Border policy changed frequently, which meant exemption criteria changed too. Keeping the design aligned with current regulation while maintaining a coherent user experience required constant communication and fast iteration.

South Australian Government detail

IP3 licence renewal (Service SA)

Designed the licence renewal flow within the new (unreleased) MySA Gov app, integrating with existing government identity infrastructure. Stakeholder engagement included working with Service SA to understand the existing manual process and map what needed to change to support a digital-first renewal pathway.

Outcome

Across these projects, I was part of shipping multiple government digital services used by South Australians during one of the most operationally demanding periods in the state’s recent history. The work covered the full lifecycle, from research and service design through to build validation, on products with real compliance and legal weight behind them.

What I learned

Working embedded in government under live COVID-19 conditions taught me how to design under genuine pressure. Not just deadline pressure, but the kind where regulations change mid-project and stakeholders carry institutional constraints you can’t always see upfront.

The biggest thing I took from this work was learning how to push back effectively. Developers have instincts, stakeholders have preferences, and those don’t always align with what users actually need. I learned how to build the case with evidence from research and testing rather than design opinion, and how to hold that position when there’s pressure to move fast.

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