My Aged Care: Empowering Older Australians Wherever They Are on the Ageing Journey

The new Aged Care Act brought sweeping reform to how aged care works, from assessment to funding, services to compliance — impacting everyone providing and receiving care. Aged care is a complex, sensitive topic and any changes needed to be carefully managed and contextualised to an individual’s situation. Over 18 months, this project worked with older Australians to co-design a new digital platform that empowers them to confidently navigate aged care choices and explains the changes. The scale and pace of reform implementation created challenges as policy, legislative and IT changes happened simultaneously, requiring constant agility and clarity on customer impacts.

During 2024/5 the project team consulted hundreds of older Australians and their families. This involved deep ethnographic research to understand people’s needs, abilities, blockers, and motivation; iterative prototype testing; and usability/accessibility trials. The team shaped solutions across diverse needs, varying levels of digital confidence, and priority populations from rural/remote regions; First Nations peoples; CALD; LGBTQI+; and more. A major challenge was the mismatch between users’ needs and limitations of back-end IT/data solutions and regulatory frameworks within the Department. This required detailed negotiation to optimise outcomes, and a real focus on UX design to remove friction, simplify language and contextualise information.

From a societal perspective, myagedcare.com.au is critical in building confidence, trust and access to aged care. The new website solves dual challenges of supporting older people through sector change, while meeting their evolving needs. It drew 1.6 million users and 3.4 million sessions in the five months from 1 November 2025 (up 18.5% and 23.4% respectively on the same period in 2024-25); and over 3.5 million users and 7.8 million sessions in the 12 months to 31 March 2026. What users say: “It’s giving people reassurance.” "It is very clear and easily navigated." “I knew exactly where to go.”

The website features a range of new tools that are visual, personalised, and help build confidence, dignity, choice and control to support critical life decisions. Building digital confidence is vital. The redesign introduces supportive moments at key points, including: * Interstitial messaging at the end of Wayfinder signalling what’s next. * Explainer videos of updated features – My Guide and checklist; Aged care home/Support at Home fee estimators; using Find a provider to search/shortlist/compare providers. * Descriptors added to main navigation items. Reducing mental load is key. Progressive contextualisation and personalisation enhancements create a more joined-up, seamless experience. * Triage and navigation enhancements help users quickly find the right starting point via a homepage Wayfinder. Through a few simple questions, it guides next steps according to cohort, needs and personal context. * Wayfinder questions lead to a personalised Help Explorer, providing information on care types, alongside relatable stories that reduce stigma and demonstrate how choices can be tailored to what matters most. * A personalised My Guide, complete with checklist, dashboard, saved items and shortlist features, allows easy access to information/preferences that can be shared with family. While saved profile information is used to prefill Find a provider and fee estimator tools simplifying the experience.