- Royal Adelaide Hospital
- Digital
- Graphic Design
Completed in 2017, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) is the state's flagship health facility, providing a comprehensive range of the most complex clinical care to an estimated 85,000 inpatients and 400,000 outpatients each year.
Simple was engaged to deliver a brand, range of launch marketing materials and a modern, easy to use website reflecting the standard of the new state of the art building. The website has been a critical platform for informing South Australians about the benefits of the new hospital, the process of its relocation, and how to access its many services.
Due to the size and expenditure of this major infrastructure project, the communication arm of the new RAH knew that all underlying initiatives, including its online presence, would face thorough public scrutiny. With this in mind, the first phase of the project was comprehensive stakeholder engagement; soliciting and documenting extensive input from consumers, carers, hospital staff, and volunteers.
This firsthand feedback provided us with insight into the shortcomings of the legacy website, the priorities of each stakeholder group, and the pertinent qualitative data that allowed us to develop a suitable framework for the website.
This framework was then presented to a test audience, who were asked to navigate through this structure, completing designated tasks. Based on the findings of this trial, we were able to further improve the website’s preliminary structure, and the navigational tools available to users.
The further refinement in wire-framing, design, and initial development soon resulted in a simple, intuitive design that reflected the browsing strategies of its audience, and design cues informed by the existing SA Health brand. After further testing, including an all-important accessibility audit, phase one of the website was launched.
In the months following this initial launch, added functionality was introduced to the website in stages. For example, an online booking system for tours of the new hospital. Due to the limited number of tours, and widespread curiosity about the hospital, the booking page received 10,000 visits in its first two hours — with no impact to the well-optimised, cloud-hosted website's availability or response time.
One of the website’s key features —and challenges— was its interactive map, which provides users with a simple, intuitive navigation experience, curtailing the building’s inherent complexity. Utilising vector-based artwork, the map is infinitely scaleable, appearing equally crisp on any device; and further, has been developed responsively to automatically rearrange itself according to the sized screen it is displayed on.
The new RAH website continues to evolve, its most recent changes coinciding with the official opening of the hospital. This transition from old RAH website to new took place the same day patients were relocated, the launch carefully orchestrated to retire the old website and simultaneously redirect its visitors at seven o’clock that same morning — the exact moment its prominent countdown timer had long anticipated.
To coincide with the launch, Simple designed a broad range of marketing materials including a direct mail advertising campaign to the local community, and stakeholder and staff guide publications for use throughout the organisation.