Role
UI/UX Designer
Scope
Website UI/UX Design
Design Systems
Design Research
Client / Year
LifeSG / 2026
Problem space
LifeSG is Singapore's all-in-one platform for citizens to access integrated government services and information. It serves as a key source of truth for individuals navigating important life milestones that require interacting with the government.
As LifeSG prepares to consolidate content and services from external agencies (such as MyLegacy, SupportGoWhere, and various MSF services) under a single platform, the website required a visual framework capable of supporting this incoming content at scale.
As a result, my role in this project was to propose a visual refresh for the homepage and content pages, and to conduct a research study to measure the effectiveness of this redesign.
Research
To understand the existing design landscape, I consulted with the design leads to uncover past design decisions, technical limitations, and business constraints. This initial audit revealed three key challenges:
Summarized Findings
No firm guidelines beyond design system for existing designs
With LifeSG set to absorb various government services, it became clear during research that the platform’s visual language would become heavily disjointed. The existing design system lacked strict, scalable guidelines for incoming components like banner dimensions and illustration styles, leaving a gap between disparate agency designs.
Illustrations were creating a scalable bottleneck
Relying on bespoke artwork for every new content page was an unsustainable practice. Because different designers may rotate onto the project over time, depending on custom illustrations created a bottleneck and can lead to inconsistent styling. To ensure rapid and consistent page deployment, it became clear that we needed to reduce this dependency by establishing a common library of reusable banner assets.
Functionality first, cosmetic enhancements second
Additionally, the fast-paced nature of business requirements often dictated tight turnaround times for ad-hoc UI requests. To meet these deadlines, design leads understandably prioritized functional delivery over strict adherence to the design system. Over time, these rapid, function-first implementations compounded across different designers, gradually fragmenting the platform's visual consistency.
Solution
The redesigned landing page introduces a streamlined sitemap, retaining high-value sections based on usage metrics and business alignment. To ensure long-term consistency, I also established comprehensive guidelines for component sizing, responsive behavior, and shared asset usage across both the homepage and future content pages.
Retained Sections and New Designs
Retaining high-use features
To prevent disrupting the existing user experience, critical high-traffic features such as the global 'Search function' and the 'Services and tools' - now renamed to 'Popular on LifeSG' were retained. This ensured citizens could still seamlessly access their most-used tools and content without relearning a new behaviour pattern.
Life Moments & Topics (The Information Architecture)
To accommodate incoming agency integrations, we introduced two new content structures. 'Life Moments' serves as a new narrative strategy focusing on key citizen milestones, while 'Topics' consolidates legacy 'Guides' into a unified taxonomy. Collaborating closely with UX writers, these sections were specifically designed as flexible frameworks to support the progressive migration of future services.
The Illustration Strategy (Solving the design debt)
To eliminate the design bottleneck caused by rotating teams, we restricted bespoke, customized illustrations to key, high-impact areas (such as the homepage hero and topics). For all other standard content pages, I implemented a standardized library of common banners and reusable assets. This drastic reduction in required custom artwork minimizes future design debt and empowers any designer to rapidly deploy consistent pages.
Research Study
To validate the effectiveness of the visual refresh, I designed a comprehensive research plan for an upcoming A/B test. This study was structured to benchmark the new design against the legacy platform, measuring success through specific UX metrics such as information findability, task success, and overall citizen satisfaction.
Although my engagement with the project concluded before the live launch and data collection phase, I successfully handed off this testing framework to the team for future execution. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to such an impactful, citizen-facing project and for the invaluable guidance from my mentors and colleagues.
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