By Elese Barrymore, Senior Content Designer
on behalf of Service NSW Digital Notifications team
Published 20 March 2025 – 1 minute read
A multi-language partnering opportunity
Client goal: reach more people who are eligible to sign up for the program.
Customer benefit: timely and trusted engagement in an inclusive and culturally sensitive manner.
The Digital Notifications team recently partnered with the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), who requested a digital notification to support their Opportunities Pathway’s Program. As a Social Impact Investment, the program aims to help eligible people receive social housing assistance to access education, training, and work across NSW.
Their goal was simple: to reach more people who were eligible to sign up for the program. DCJ’s brief included details of 4 providers delivering the program, one being an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Community provider that would benefit from culturally safe messaging.
About our team
The Digital Notifications team help NSW Government partners send effective, timely and trusted notifications tailored to the needs of each customer.
Our Content Designers are passionate about designing content for all citizens of NSW and I especially love co-designing with Product Designers to produce content that complements the user experience.
Embedding culturally safe content
Through effective stakeholder engagement, our team quickly shared our content design principles and practices with DCJ. This included our commitment to creating an easy and trusted experience when receiving a Service NSW digital notification.
We collaborated with DCJ’s Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes (TAO) Unit and shared how we develop content in line with our best practice content guidelines and our Global Experience Language (GEL) tool.
This was a great opportunity to show how culturally safe terms can be embedded into a standard message, creating multi-cultural messaging for targeted cohorts.
In this instance, two cultural terms were embedded to create a culturally safe and inclusive message. Being a proud Wakka Wakka woman, I was enthusiastic to incorporate a mix of inclusive Aboriginal terms to increase engagement.
- ‘Mob’ is a term to identify a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is used to describe who they are and where they are from in the context of family and indigenous ancestry.
- ‘Yarn’ is a term that describes an informal conversation or storytelling in a culturally safe environment, a cultural practice not confined by mode, time, or place.
Just by adding 2 additional terms, we transformed a message into a culturally safe message for mob.
“Collaboration is so important across agencies to ensure key messages reach the right people with the use of inclusive language. The Digital Notifications team listened to our suggestions and provided an opportunity for feedback on the final version. Small changes can make a big impact”
Sharon McLeod, Acting Manager, Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes
Aligning with culturally informed approval processes
As part of our co-design process, we engaged our Aboriginal Service Design team to review the messaging and were delighted to receive a positive response around the cultural inclusions.
Next, we contacted DCJ’s Transformation Aboriginal Outcomes (TAO) unit and shared our proposed changes which were reviewed and approved in record time.
The Content Design team in Digital Notifications look forward to more multi-language content opportunities, creating targeted messages for specific cohorts of NSW citizens.
Want to work with us?
Contact us to learn more about Service NSW digital capabilities.