back to our work

MPI - Food Safety

everyday over 500 new zealanders get food poisoning.
a new customer-centred information architecture and content model for the food safety within the ministry for primary industries (MPI) website.
www.mpi.govt.nz/food-business

Information architecture

Experience Design

Content model

Challenge

Every day, over 500 New Zealanders get food poisoning. We needed to ensure it's audiences including consumers, small food businesses as well as larger manufacturers and exporters, could get and use the information they wanted, when they needed it.

The Food Safety Authority was merged with MAF to form Ministry for Primary Industries and their website was 'tacked onto' the new MPI website in a rush to keep continuation of service. However, 8 years later, the Food Safety information model and content no longer met the needs of it's intended audiences and lacked integration to other related topics on the MPI website.

Solution

We were contracted to design, develop and test a new information architecture (IA) and content model for Food Safety.

Our initial analysis with the team highlighted key issues in the prioritisation of key and important information, a mix of content for different audiences (consumer/business/manufacturers) diluting messages and confusing audiences and a lack of integration and cross referencing with other related MPI content, such as exporting food.

We created and tested a new IA model and content hierarchy and taxonomy to create a flexible, effective and customer-centred model.

Results

The resulting information architecture and content model was user tested and validated. Upon implementation, data and customer insights found that users were much more easily able to find and utilise the information due to the new structure and model with positive effects for food preparation and health for all New Zealanders.