The Secret Little Agency Takes Singapore’s National Heritage Board Back to its Roots

Singapore’s National Heritage Board (NHB) has unveiled a revitalised Roots brand and digital experience via Roots.gov.sg - a one-stop destination for discovering Singapore’s culture and heritage. As it headed into the site’s 5th anniversary, NHB embarked on a journey together with TSLA Design to redesign Roots, and completely revitalise the site with the ambition of building a rich resource that was not only accessible to all, but evokes a deeper curiosity and reach into heritage.

“The revamped Roots.gov.sg is designed to be a one-stop digital concierge for Singapore’s heritage, bringing together content from across our National Collection, heritage trails, National Monuments, intangible cultural heritage and more. It offers fresh content, new features that improve user-friendliness, and also integrates resources from other platforms like the National Library Board’s Infopedia and the Esplanade’s Offstage websites to facilitate information gathering. With these enhancements, it is now easier than ever for everyone to discover the depth and breadth of Singapore’s heritage,” said Norfaiz Noeryamin, manager (digital), strategic communications and digital division, National Heritage Board.

TSLA Design’s scope included branding the visual identity of Roots, improving UX and UI, improving ontology functions, and extended to integrated marketing. This involved a deep dive of poring through the site’s original web pages, conducting multiple focus groups across different user profiles to organise over 120,000 pieces of content into intuitive categories to help bring out the content and facilitate a better user journey on the site.

“You’re going through every artifact, article, photograph and piece of content thinking there is so much here, and yet, Singapore is still in its infancy compared to older civilizations. To be able to build our Roots right and redesign how all generations access this treasure trove of heritage was an incredible experience for us.” said a spokesperson from TSLA Design.