Empowering Economic Growth
Developing pathways for sustainable growth of businesses in domestic and international markets.
Role
Lead UX Researcher, Assistant Designer
Industry
Government and Economic Development
Platform
Mobile, Web
Challenge
Enterprise Singapore needed to translate its core mission—supporting the growth of local and foreign businesses—into a more intuitive, outcomes-driven website experience. Despite offering a wide range of products and services to provide support to businesses during COVID-19, they saw low engagement and high drop-off rates.
Stakeholder interviews revealed how internal teams had conflicting views on structure and strategy, leading to a fragmented platform that didn’t reflect how users actually navigated or made decisions.
My Role
I led all research activities across this engagement: study design, participant recruitment, execution, synthesis, and senior stakeholder reporting. I also coordinated with an external vendor for usability testing and eye-tracking implementation.
As part of the design process, I took on the initial creation of the design system and supported in enhancing the copy used across the prototype.
Process and Core Tensions
Breakdown of User Segments
What We Discovered
The initial hypothesis was that businesses struggled to discover relevant support because they were primarily aware of Enterprise Singapore's grants. Through stakeholder discussions and early research, I identified startups and SMEs without dedicated account managers as the primary audience, as they were most reliant on self-service channels. Qualitative interviews revealed that awareness was not the core issue—limited time and the need to quickly find relevant support were the primary barriers to engagement.
To inform the navigation and content strategy, I conducted a tree test to understand how businesses naturally searched for information. The results showed that 63% of users navigated by their immediate needs, 32% by industry or market context, and only 5% explored the website without a specific goal in mind. These behavioural patterns became the foundation of the information architecture and led to the following insights that shaped the experience:
1. Intent-first journeys beat product-first structures
Internal teams prioritised showcasing the full range of offerings. But users, especially SMEs, wanted guided flows based on business goals, not feature catalogs.
2. Users know their pain points—but can’t self-diagnose solutions
Teams emphasised informational depth through details, most containing jargon. Users wanted layman, clear next steps and actionable paths to evaluate the suitability of products and services provided, as well as visibility on experiences of other businesses to learn from them.
Design Principles
Templates
Designing for Speed, Engagement, and Inspiration
After I uncovered the need for quick browsing and more efficient navigation to desired information on the website, we decided that designs had to be scannable, provide access to the lessons from other businesses, and encourage users to self-discover in order to fill this gap. With this in mind, the following changes were made:
1. We shifted the site strategy from broad category listings to industry- and need-driven navigation, with a content recommender as a key feature to drive engagement.
→ I validated the design intent by using eye-tracking in later testing phases to confirm content structure aligned with user attention and mental models. Users in testing responded positively, expressing greater clarity and interest in Enterprise Singapore’s services beyond just grants.
2. We redesigned key product and industry pages to surface tangible benefits, step-by-step guidance, and stories from other businesses, replacing overwhelming content dumps.
→ Final designs included scalable templates and a phased roadmap. Based on trust built through this research, the client extended Aleph’s scope to content strategy.
To ensure the platform could scale beyond the initial redesign, I developed a comprehensive design system documenting component anatomy, behaviours, states, and usage principles. Grounded in industry best practices such as Material Design, it provided Enterprise Singapore's teams with a consistent framework for managing and extending the experience over time.
“It’s more user friendly, less cluttered. Straight to the point, gives step by step instructions on what to do, and how to work with ESG.”
Operations Manager, Local SME (Going Global)
Results and Impact
Delivered a new site architecture built around business needs and intentions.
Developed modular templates for fast rollout across teams.
Shifted client mindset from product broadcasting to guided enablement.
Led to further engagements, including deeper content work.
“I thought it was a good product and a significant improvement.The revamped website will go a long way towards improving public perception of what we do. It's a big step forward."
Jeffrey Siow | Managing Director/COO of EnterpriseSG
What I Would Do Differently
During usability testing, users occasionally described product detail pages as being overly long, and I observed that key content was often skimmed rather than read. To reduce cognitive load while preserving access to important information, I replaced anchor links with tabbed navigation, allowing users to access relevant content without excessive scrolling.
I also repositioned the "Need Additional Help?" section outside the tabs to support natural next steps regardless of where users were in their journey. Complemented by related case studies and recommended services, this encouraged deeper exploration of Enterprise Singapore's offerings and improved journey continuity across the platform.
Reflections
Understanding decision-making behaviour under time pressure was critical. This work reinforced how clarity through guidance—not just completeness by accessibility—builds user trust. Bringing that clarity into team alignment was just as valuable as the product outcomes.
