Case study: ANGELS
ANGELS is a website that assists entrepreneurs in the Australian space industry to navigate Australian and relevant international laws that regulate space activities.
The ‘Australian Navigational Guide Explaining Laws for Space’(ANGELS) is a joint initiative by Adelaide Law School at the University of Adelaide, and International Aerospace Law and Policy Group (IALPG).
The website is designed to support entrepreneurship and business growth in the Australian space industry by providing helpful, informative resources on applicable laws and regulations.
This project involved six undergraduate law students, under the direction of Duncan Blake, Special Counsel from IALPG.
Problem
Entrepreneurs need to clearly understand complex legislation governing space activities in order for their businesses to grow and thrive.
Having a clear understanding of the laws that regulate and govern space activity in Australia and around the world is critical for entrepreneurs in order to progress their innovative ideas and projects. This knowledge not only helps inform how entrepreneurs can ensure compliance, but opens doors to further business growth and opportunity.
Key challenges
Technical jargon
Legal information is often highly technical and difficult to grasp clearly. There is a lot of industry and legal ‘jargon’, and it’s hard to understand what actions to take.
Time consuming
Relevant information is scattered throughout different locations on the internet, making it difficult to find and determine which pieces of information are relevant.
Legal knowledge
Entrepreneurs often have different levels of pre-existing legal experience and knowledge that set them at different starting points.
Diversity of scenarios
It is hard to know which regulations are applicable to which context. This is especially prevalent in the space industry in Australia, which is young and developing.
Our solution
Way-finding options from the homepage
- Search bar front and centre for those who know exactly what they’re seeking.
- 3 categorical topics to serve as a starting point into different areas.
- “Not sure where to start” prompts to encourage discovery for those who aren’t sure where to begin.
Resource centre with filterable content
- A single destination to hold all legal articles and separate them from other site content
- Filtering options for users to narrow down topics of interest
- Minimalist card design featuring custom excerpts to help users determine relevant articles
Modular page builder
The pages are built with flexible, multi-use blocks, including:
- Executive summary
- In-content “skip to” navigation links
- Highlighted content boxes
- Use case scenarios
- Accordions
- Next steps
Our process
User research
The ANGELS project team, including Adelaide University Law students and project lead Duncan Blake conducted a research tour around Australia to better understand the needs of entrepreneurs in the space industry.
Our UX Strategist Liz was also able to join in on the last day of the tour and hear first hand from entrepreneurs about their needs and pain points.
We created an interview guide to help assist the students with their consultations.
This guide is free to download so that anyone may use it to help make better experiences!
Synthesis workshop
Some of the themes we synthesised included:
- Awareness & first need recognition
- Motivations, requirements, reasons to pursue
- How they research online
- Levels of legal knowledge
- Levels of web proficiency
Strategy & wireframes
As part of our strategic planning, we worked on:
- Content inventory matrix
- Feature backlog
- Development specification
- Wireframes
- Information design
The outcome
Information is consolidated, easy to understand and practical.
- Following an inverted pyramid style, headings are framed as questions and followed immediately by concise and succinct answers. Each article includes actionable steps that entrepreneurs can take next.
- Accordions help minimise the amount of content by hiding what isn’t necessary to be visible.
- The constrained content width, extra padding and line height contribute to a more comfortable reading experience.
Articles cater to time-poor users with increased scannability and in-page “skip” links
- The summary at the start of every article helps users understand what the article is about, and the contents box allows users to skip to different page sections.
- Each article is separated into different sections, making the content easy to scan and enabling users to assess which part is helpful or relevant for them.
- Important information boldly stands out: users don’t need to spend time reading a lot of content to obtain key messages or conditions.
Clear navigation pathways
- The homepage caters to different levels of legal knowledge, allowing users of all types to find helpful information on the site through search, pathway navigation or discovery prompts.
Use case scenarios
- Fictional examples throughout all articles illustrate the context of laws in different situations, helping entrepreneurs better determine relevance and application to their own scenarios.
Visit the ANGELS website
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