justice.govt.nz
Helping New Zealanders navigate the justice system with confidence
A personal redesign of the Ministry of Justice's information architecture and navigation, reorienting the site around user situations instead of institutional structure.
year
2026
timeframe
3 weeks
role
Sole designer
skills
Information architecture, Heuristic evaluation, Interaction design
Same site, redesigned around real situations. Drag to compare.
Challenge: Solving the "Translation Problem"
Before someone can find help, they first have to decode which of the Ministry's internal categories their situation falls under. A protection order sits under "Family." A traffic fine could be under "Courts," "Fines, reparation & civil debt," or the homepage quick links, depending on where you land.
justice.govt.nz serves people at their most stressful moments, and none of them arrive already knowing how the Ministry organises itself. This project set out to remove that translation step entirely, redesigning navigation around what people are trying to do, not how the site is structured internally.
Where the Structure Breaks Down
I ran a heuristic evaluation against Nielsen's 10 heuristics and the NZ Government Web Usability Standard to find exactly where navigation creates friction.
Sitewide alert
Scam warning on every page
Content duplication
Same categories appear in two places
Mixed navigation logic
4 different organising principles at once
Unmarked external links
5 courts open other sites with no warning
Dropdown overload
Tribunals alone lists 23 items
Stale content
2020 referendum page still in navigation
"Users have to translate their situation into the Ministry's org chart before they can find help."
Modelling Where Friction Compounds
With the friction points identified, I mapped one real scenario end-to-end, someone searching for information on a protection order, to see exactly where those points compound. Built from the heuristic findings above rather than user interviews, it traces where the current structure adds friction to an already difficult moment.
From Institutional Categories to Situations
Primary navigation now mirrors five real situations instead of institutional categories, with full dropdown detail replacing the old flat lists.
Before
● Family
● Courts
● Tribunals
● Justice sector & policy
● About
● Māori land
● Accessibility support
After
● I have a legal issue
● Family and relationships
● Fines and debt
● Licences and records
● Māori land and Treaty
Impact: Structure Before Style
Clearer navigation. Fewer categories to decode. Every decision traced to a specific structural finding, proof that the biggest fix here was structural, not visual.
