Designing inclusive digital services for aging Canadians through human-centered service design and a virtual assistant.
Becoming a Senior in Canada
UX & Service Design for Aging Canadians | Government of Canada
As more Canadians age into retirement, navigating government benefits like Old Age Security (OAS) can be confusing, especially for those facing isolation, limited digital literacy, or accessibility barriers. This project, led in partnership with the Government of Canada, aimed to improve the experience of aging Canadians by introducing a virtual assistant and improving internal research workflows.
My role as a UX and Service Designer included leading user research with government teams, mapping service journeys, prototyping solutions, and facilitating stakeholder alignment. Our focus was on inclusivity, accessibility, and human-centered digital transformation.
My role as a UX and Service Designer included leading user research with government teams, mapping service journeys, prototyping solutions, and facilitating stakeholder alignment. Our focus was on inclusivity, accessibility, and human-centered digital transformation.
Insight Themes
We distilled 200+ observations into 6 overarching insight themes:
1. Supporting Systems and Materials
• Fragmented systems & missing documentation
• Pain points: Tools & technology, asset management, support templates
2. Privacy Standards
• Cumbersome policies blocked access to participants
• Pain points: Privacy guidelines, data confidentiality, compensation
3. Internal Processes and Alignment
• Slow approvals & disconnected workflows
• Pain points: Process clarity, velocity, complexity, centralization
4. Culture and Engagement
• Culture not enabling user-first mindset
• Pain points: Community of practice, cultural support
5. Collaboration and Roles
• Unclear responsibilities led to blockers
• Pain points: Resources and skills, accountability
6. Community Relationships
• Limited ways to connect with marginalized users
• Pain points: User pool diversity, participant recruitment
Overarching Ambition
To be successful, relevant, and reach wider impact, DECD research needs to demonstrate how it helps Canadians navigate government services better.
“I have the feeling of not holding up the promise to assist Canadians and improve their life, due to inability to get access to user research.”
Top Pain Points by Category
Each theme reflects common barriers that internal research teams encountered when trying to engage with Canadians. These insights came from direct quotes during stakeholder interviews.
🧩 Process Complexity & Clarity (15%)
“It’s impossible to complete… too many steps to even start.”
⏱️ Process Velocity (11%)
“Each step takes too long with too many templates and reviews.”
📍 Ownership & Responsibilities (10%)
“I don’t even know who to ask—it’s like ping-pong.”
🔒 Privacy Guidelines (9%)
“We’re afraid to use the data we collect.”
👥 User Pool Diversity (8%)
“We can’t test with the people we need to reach.”
🛠 Resources & Skillset (8%)
“We don’t have a dedicated user researcher anymore.”
🎯 Culture (8%)
“No one values the importance of user research here.”
🔁 Process Centralization (6%)
“Too many handoffs and unclear ownership.”
💻 Tools & Technology (6%)
“Manual processes everywhere.”
🤝 Community of Practice (5%)
“There’s no design support network.”
📋 Participant Recruitment (5%)
“It delays everything and feels like a blocker.”
🗄 Data Confidentiality (3%)
“We don’t know who can access what data.”
🧾 Privacy Approvals (3%)
“Security approvals are stalling the work.”
💵 Compensation (3%)
“Why do we need a SIN number just to pay participants?”
📄 Support Materials (3%)
“What templates are we supposed to use?”
📦 Assets Management (3%)
“No one knows where anything is stored or documented.”
Impactful Quotes
These are just a few of the direct quotes from internal research participants:
“I have a sense of isolation in the design community, that makes it difficult to unblock challenges.”
“Delay in recruitment can potentially ruin the entire project.”
“I have the feeling that I’m not holding up the promise to assist Canadians… due to lack of access to user research.”
“We’re very careful with customer data, but at the same time so afraid to use and access it.”
“Process is too complex and no rules exist. It’s like ping-pong.”
“The main blocker is the amount of time each step takes overall.”
“They should empower us to do this work—not restrain us.”
Improving the Researcher Experience
Service Mapping & Prototyping
To understand how government teams currently conduct user research, I mapped their full process — from formulating research needs to sharing results.
This Member Journey Map highlighted inefficiencies such as redundant documentation, unclear approval chains, and delayed participant recruitment. These findings informed business imperatives such as streamlining the research workflow and improving privacy approval protocols.
Mapping the internal researcher journey helped surface workflow gaps, team coordination challenges, and opportunities to centralize resources.
Business Imperatives
Based on research insights, we defined 7 key imperatives to improve the internal research process:
1. Enable Research Process by Technology
Consolidate and integrate DECD digital interfaces, workflows, and processes to enable research excellence through a scalable, responsive, and cost-effective foundation.
Consolidate and integrate DECD digital interfaces, workflows, and processes to enable research excellence through a scalable, responsive, and cost-effective foundation.
2. Provide Adequate Support Materials
Offer a single source of truth for templates and supporting materials. Centralizing assets reduces confusion and increases consistency across research efforts.
Offer a single source of truth for templates and supporting materials. Centralizing assets reduces confusion and increases consistency across research efforts.
3. Streamline Research Process
Use agile collaboration and outcome-driven workflows to reduce duplication, minimize delays, and accelerate execution.
Use agile collaboration and outcome-driven workflows to reduce duplication, minimize delays, and accelerate execution.
4. Enhance Privacy Approval Protocol
Align privacy expectations with research needs. Work collaboratively to define shared success criteria, establish trust, and remove barriers like unclear consent workflows.
Align privacy expectations with research needs. Work collaboratively to define shared success criteria, establish trust, and remove barriers like unclear consent workflows.
5. Enable User-Centric Culture & Empower Teams
Promote a user-centered mindset. Support team collaboration and empower researchers by creating a sense of shared purpose, community, and confidence.
Promote a user-centered mindset. Support team collaboration and empower researchers by creating a sense of shared purpose, community, and confidence.
6. Establish Team Governance & Collaboration Rules
Clearly define team roles and accountability structures within the research process to streamline oversight and decision-making.
Clearly define team roles and accountability structures within the research process to streamline oversight and decision-making.
7. Foster Member Communities
Develop channels to engage, compensate, and maintain relationships with underserved populations and stakeholder communities.
Develop channels to engage, compensate, and maintain relationships with underserved populations and stakeholder communities.
Mapping the Senior Citizen Experience
After mapping the internal research workflow, we turned our attention to the end user: aging Canadians navigating complex benefit processes.
We conducted service mapping exercises to understand how aging Canadians navigate government websites and services.We created a second journey map to visualize their experience applying for and managing Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). This helped us identify moments of confusion, delay, and frustration — all key opportunities for a virtual assistant to step in. This helped us uncover pain points like:
• Fragmented information
• Accessibility barriers
• Inconsistent support across touchpoints
“It’s like a maze of links. I give up after a few minutes.” – Participant insight
Visualizing the end-to-end experience of applying for Old Age Pension (OAS).
Personas: Understanding Seniors’ Diverse Needs
Based on research insights and existing ESDC resources, we created two guiding personas to represent the seniors most affected by barriers to government services. These archetypes helped shape inclusive design decisions for the virtual assistant.
1. The Vulnerable Hero
“The Vulnerable Hero: Often isolated or systemically disadvantaged”
• Lives alone or is socially isolated
• Low-income
• May identify as a visible minority or Indigenous
• Recent immigrant
• Limited education
• Lives with a disability, chronic illness, or mental health issue
2. The Underserved Hero
“The Underserved Hero: Often excluded due to geography, identity, or infrastructure gaps.”
• Indigenous
• Recent immigrant
• Unemployed
• Living in remote or rural areas
• Limited or no access to digital services
• LGBTQ2+
Prototype Visual Deliverables
Leveraging AI to Improve Service Delivery
As part of this initiative, I collaborated on the design of an AI-powered virtual assistant for the Government of Canada. I created conversation flows and interaction patterns that guided how the assistant responded to common Old Age Security (OAS) inquiries—such as checking payment dates, updating profiles, and navigating eligibility. Working closely with developers, I helped define user intents, response logic, and fallback states to ensure the experience was clear, accessible, and human-centered. By leveraging conversational AI, we increased response speed, reduced reliance on call centres, and improved access for users with limited digital literacy.
As part of this initiative, I collaborated on the design of an AI-powered virtual assistant for the Government of Canada. I created conversation flows and interaction patterns that guided how the assistant responded to common Old Age Security (OAS) inquiries—such as checking payment dates, updating profiles, and navigating eligibility. Working closely with developers, I helped define user intents, response logic, and fallback states to ensure the experience was clear, accessible, and human-centered. By leveraging conversational AI, we increased response speed, reduced reliance on call centres, and improved access for users with limited digital literacy.
Below is the virtual assistant prototype designed to live within Service Canada’s platform. This solution helps users—particularly seniors—access timely answers about Old Age Security, payments, and eligibility with less friction and greater confidence.
Screen 1: Introduction
The virtual assistant opens with a friendly, accessible tone and gives users a clear path to common actions like updating a profile or asking questions about benefits.
Screen 2: Topic Selection
Users are presented with concise, relevant options to choose from — including topics like payment dates, benefit eligibility, and profile updates.
Screen 3: Selecting a Question
When a user selects a topic such as “Question about OAS Benefit,” the assistant prompts for clarification and prepares to retrieve personalized information.
Screen 4: Personalized Info
The assistant confirms the user’s identity and provides direct, plain-language answers — such as the exact payment amount and deposit date — without requiring complex navigation.
Screen 5: User Feedback Interaction
After answering the question, the assistant offers helpful follow-up options and checks in with the user for further support.
Screen 6: Accessibility Features
The assistant is fully accessible, supporting voice interaction, screen readers, and multilingual responses — designed with older adults and underserved populations in mind.
These screens represent a simplified user journey. The full prototype includes logic for different inquiry paths, privacy safeguards, and API integration planning.
Mobile wireframes for the virtual assistant prototype. This flow illustrates how seniors can access Old Age Security (OAS) information—such as payment dates, benefit details, and account updates—through a guided, accessible conversation. The design emphasizes clarity, simplified choices, and conversational UX for seniors with varying levels of digital literacy.
Impact and Outcomes
Our goal was to reduce friction and increase access for aging Canadians navigating essential government services. The virtual assistant I prototyped improves both internal research workflows and external service delivery by offering:
• Clearer pathways for seniors to get answers quickly
• Improved accessibility through conversational UI
• Increased satisfaction for internal teams and end users alike
High-fidelity mockup demonstrating cross-platform integration of the virtual assistant. The assistant can be accessed both on desktop (embedded in the Service Canada Labs site) and mobile devices, providing seniors with multiple accessible touchpoints to engage with government services.
Facilitating Adoption & Organizational Change
This is critical to showcase your service design leadership and cross-functional alignment. Keep it, but shorten to hit key points:
• Early stakeholder alignment
• Internal training/workshops
• Phased rollout
• Measurement frameworks
Challenges & Solutions in Government Delivery
This gives you a strong place to highlight your strategic thinking and systems navigation. Suggested sub-topics:
• Bureaucracy Navigation
• Data Privacy & Security
• Legacy System Integration
• Inclusive & Accessible Design
• Cross-Team Collaboration
Measured Impact
• 24/7 access
• Simplified journeys
• Multilingual capability
• Reduced frustration
• Satisfaction from internal teams
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