Infrastructure Canada

Project Overview

The Infrastructure Canada department of the Federal Government of Canada sought to enhance usability and improve task completion rates for the Infrastructure Funding application process. To achieve this, our team conducted extensive user research, identifying pain points in navigation, content clarity, and overall user flow.

Utilizing web analytics and internal survey data, we identified key barriers preventing users from successfully accessing vital infrastructure funding. Our objective was to provide strategic recommendations to streamline the funding application process, making it more intuitive and accessible for municipal, provincial, and territorial governments. Through data-driven insights and user-focused improvements, we aimed to enhance efficiency, reduce user frustration, and increase successful application submissions.

The Challenge

Shortly after the project began, Infrastructure Canada underwent a significant expansion, creating unexpected challenges for our team. As the department transitioned, accessing key stakeholders and government officials became increasingly difficult, delaying access to critical guidance and data essential to our research. The lack of direct input from decision-makers posed hurdles in understanding policy requirements, user needs, and procedural nuances.

Despite these challenges, our team adapted by employing alternative research methods, exploring external information sources related to infrastructure funding and the application process. Despite our best efforts, direct user insights and usability testing remained critical to the project’s success—gaps we were unable to fully bridge without access to key stakeholders.

We proactively communicated our challenges to our Infrastructure Canada liaison, outlining the difficulties in accessing key stakeholders and our efforts to keep the project on track by leveraging alternative resources. In response, we were informed that Infrastructure Canada was undergoing a restructuring phase to become Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Canada, expanding its mandate to include housing and community development. As a result, we were advised that the project scope would be temporarily limited until the restructuring was complete, impacting our ability to implement broader usability improvements at that time.

The Results

Despite limited access to information, resources, and stakeholders, our team remained committed to delivering a strong foundation for the project should it resume as intended. We developed comprehensive documentation outlining key elements such as branding, information architecture, and accessibility guidelines. This framework ensured that when the project moved forward, it would be well-equipped to enhance the Infrastructure Funding application process and improve completion success rates.

Although the project was paused, our Infrastructure Canada liaison informed us that their team had begun implementing some of the recommendations outlined in our reports. This demonstrated the immediate value of our research and ensured that key usability improvements were being considered, even as the department underwent its restructuring.

While validating our systemic updates through usability testing and real user data would have been ideal, the department’s restructuring made it impossible at the time. However, we were informed that many of our recommendations were implemented, leading to noticeable improvements in user satisfaction and task completion rates. This feedback reinforced the impact of our research and design insights, even in the absence of direct user validation.