Projects

Over 20 years of delivery:

1. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

   
   

   Challenge

   The Matrix Cluster Programme is a UK government initiative designed to establish a shared service center for nine central government departments and their arms-length bodies.

   Supporting approximately 46,000 civil servants, the transition to a unified back-office system is projected to save the Treasury £2 billion.

   The programme aims to improve user experience, reduce costs, and standardise processes and data across key areas such as finance and HR.

   Constraints

   • SaaS ERP system (Workday)
   • Adopt not adapt; using of out-of-the-box features
   • Waterfall delivery

   Work completed

   • End-to-end service mapping using leading tech practice
   • Identification of risks and assumptions for prototyping, testing and validation
   • Collaboration across a broad range of external service providers
   • Process alignment across multiple central government departments
   • Development of a more progressive and accessible test strategy
   • Gap analysis and recommendations for CDDO assessment

   Results

   Aspirational user journeys and business processes were aligned across multiple departments, creating a foundation blueprint for a unified cross-governmental service.

   A strong focus on inclusive design was advocated, working within tight product constraints to deliver the most accessible solution possible.

   Collaboration with technical leads and service integration partner resulted in the delivery of a more robust test strategy, ensuring better outcomes for a wider range of users.

2. Care Quality Commission (CQC)

   

   Challenge

   As part of CQC's transition to a new operating model, a diverse group of 'non-rated' regulated services needed to be integrated into CQC's new Microsoft platform, allowing them to be managed alongside 'rated' services. This presented a series of key design challenges around the registration and assessment journey, internal and external product interface and published reports.

   Constraints

   • SaaS system (Microsoft Dynamics 365)
   • Using out-of-the-box features
   • Strict regulatory governance

   Work completed

   • Workshops to bottom out questions relating to non-rated policy, technical constraints and business requirements
   • Planning and conducting contextual enquiries with healthcare providers and CQC inspectors
   • Planning and conducting usability testing of the existing system with CQC inspectors to identify areas of commonality and reuse
   • Figma prototypes created across the end-to-end, including registration, assessment and published reports detailing where explicit change was needed
   • UX validation of our end-to-end solution with internal users and healthcare providers
   • Techical assurance with 3rd party providers and CQC data and development teams
   • Close collaboration with legal and policy teams to ensure the solution was compliant

   Results

   A technically simple service was delivered that aligned with inspector's specific ways of working and enabled CQC to consistently assess all regulated healthcare services, whether 'rated' or 'non-rated'.

   The new external assurance process ensured healthcare providers had time to reply securely to assessments before reports were published.

   Our work-stream deployed the service ahead of schedule, facilitating a smooth transition from the incumbent CRM system and ensured regulatory compliance for CQC.

3. HMRC

   

   Challenge

   The discovery aimed to explore the problem space of Borders and Trade service outages and examined their impact on UK businesses. It incorporated both internal and external perspectives to understand how incidents were detected, escalated, and resolved.

   Work completed

   • Research across multiple Government departments and domains to gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem space and organisational landscape
   • Engagment and site visits with various operational teams across HMRC, Home Office and the National monitoring hub to understand identification and escalation of incidents
   • Contextual enquiries with external businesses to understand their experiences, contingency planning and the short and longer term impact of service outages
   • Documenting experiences and pain-points
   • Mapping as-is process areas, the outage ecosystem, value transactions and service gaps
   • Recommendations to help reduce impact on UK businesses

   Results

   Framing of the fundamental design challenge and opportunities to test during Alpha.

4. HMRC

   

   Challenge

   The service aimed to keep the flow of goods moving between the UK and Europe with minimal friction at key points of the journey. Our team needed to rapidly adapt to evolving policy and business requirements during the post EU-exit delivery environment.

   Constraints

   • Rapid policy shift
   • Strict legal governance

   Work completed

   • Gov prototype kit used to build out and test journey enhancements and new business requirements
   • Development of UX roadmap
   • A/B testing of design iterations across multiple product areas
   • Usability testing with traders, hauliers and freight forwarders to improve the accessibility and user experience of the public-facing service

   Results

   Through continuous improvement, the service adapted to emerging policy requirements while optimising the end-to-end experience. It reduced customs administration time for traders, freight forwarders, and hauliers, enabling low-friction goods check-in at border locations and minimised congestion at UK ports.

5. Home Office

   

   Challenge

   Understand the needs of Border Force in assessing, processing, and controlling goods at UK ports. Then develop an enhanced service that addresses existing pain points, improves successful identification of high-risk movements, and expedites the flow of trade between the UK and Europe.

   Work completed

   • Discovery to investigate context, challenges and needs of internal users and the objectives of HMRC and Home Office customs initiatives.
   • Task models developed for Border Force officers
   • Extensive digital prototyping with the Gov prototype kit
   • Usability / hypothesis testing
   • Deep dive data investigations to reveal the frequency, type and risk of UK goods movements
   • On-site usability testing to validate a minimum viable product

   Results

   A comprehensive redesign of the service significantly streamlined daily operations, enabling Border Force to react to evolving national priorities by harnessing real-time customs data across UK ports.

   The new investigative tools provided enhanced visibility into goods movements, facilitating more effective risk assessments, particularly during peak periods.

   By extending their operational time horizon, officers gained valuable flexibility to identify, evaluate, and manage high-risk consignments more efficiently.

   Fixing common usability issues improved satisfaction, increased trust, and delivered a service that reinforced the UK's customs capabilities.

6. Department for Transport (DfT)

   

   Challenge

   The aim during alpha was to cover known gaps from discovery and test ideas to improve the Blue Badge reapplication journey, with a particular emphasis on reducing anxiety and stress for existing badge holders when they go to renew their badges.

   Work completed

   • Mapping the as-is reapplication service
   • Identification of gaps and opportunities
   • Contextual enquiries
   • To-be service blueprints
   • Digital and paper prototypes, validating ideas with existing badge holders
   • MVP Definition

   Results

   During Alpha, we investigated opportunities to digitally integrate with NHS, passport office and third-party verification services to help reduce the stress and anxiety encountered during reassessment.

   The result was a technically feasible, end-to-end proposal that was cognisent of the emotional needs of badge holders and their ability to remain independent.

7. NHS Digital

   

   Challenge

   The service aimed to better protect patients by enabling the identification, early notification, and remediation of faulty implants or medicines found to have harmful side effects.

   Constraints

   • Waterfall delivery

   Work completed

   • Accessibility audit and heuristic evaluation of existing products (JS based single page application)
   • Recommendations to meet WCAG 2.2 AA and public sector accessibility regulations
   • Design sprint to create a proof-of-concept that identified patients at high-risk, using NHSD prototype kit and service standards to demonstrate a simple, compliant journey
   • Strategic proposal to improve the service journeys and usability longer term

   Results

   Awareness of accessibility legislation was raised to ensure the existing service and its constituent products could be made more inclusive and fully compliant with legal requirements.

   By applying design thinking and leveraging service standards, a clear vision of an optimised service was demonstrated, showing how user needs and policy intent could be effectively met.

8. HMRC

   

   Challenge

   HMRC's first environmental tax aimed to reduce virgin plastics in industry and incentivise the use of recycled materials.

   As the legislative deadline approached we needed to create and demonstrate a streamlined business registration and tax return journey that met the needs of businesses, ready for GDS Alpha assessment.

   Constraints

   • Legislative hard-stop
   • High team churn

   Work completed

   • Identifying needs to guide the design of service
   • Mapping out service registration and tax return journeys
   • Extensive digital prototyping with the Gov prototype kit
   • Usability testing and iteration
   • Cross-service collaboration

   Results

   After prototyping and validating our design with businesses, we collaborated closely with other HMRC services to ensure a cohesive, end-to-end user experience. I led the design discussions for our GDS Alpha assessment (opens in a new tab), where we met the Service Standard, allowing the project to successfully move to Beta.

9. HM Land Registry

   

   Challenge

   Transforming the way that agricultural land documents and Crown records were catalogued and retrieved from extensive historical archives. The digital service also aimed to guard against the loss or deterioration of physical paper documents.

   Work completed

   • Task models and accessible digital prototypes
   • Usability testing with internal users

   Results

   The new casework system mitigated the risk of fire and flood at the archive centre by formalising the digitisation of incoming documents received by HMLR.

   Time taken to index and retrieve documents was significantly reduced by eliminating the need for caseworkers to physically access and handle them.

   Throughout development, accessibility standards were prioritised, particularly regarding the generation of accessible PDFs, to ensure full compliance with public sector accessibility regulations.

10. Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

    

    Challenge

    Understand the current, future and transitional states of Future Farming and Countryside services and test ideas to improve the application and claims process for AES.

    Constraints

    • EU exit
    • Rapid policy shift

    Work completed

    • Contextual research to understand needs, pain points and opportunities to improve existing service journeys for farmers and foresters applying for AES
    • Close collaboration with the DEFRA Policy team, Natural England, Environment Agency, Forestry Commission and Rural Payments Agency to understand objectives and challenges
    • Storyboarding journeys and extensive digital prototyping of new services (Gov prototype kit)
    • Cross-functional design sprints were conducted to rapidly drive forward insights and collaborative solutions
    • Usability testing to refine and steer design iteration toward more intuitive end-to-end services that met the needs of farmers and foresters
    • Service blueprints of existing, transitional and future states

    Results

    Multiple application and claim journeys for new policy inititives were created and validated (Environmental land management, Sustainable farming incentive, Tree health grants) working toward delivering the goals of the Government's 25 year environment plan.

    Through design sprints a shared understanding of the problem space was created across diverse stakeholder groups. A reusable workshop format was developed that enabled rapid learning across other workstreams. This also fostered broader awareness of user-centred design methods and demonstrated how design thinking could be effectively applied to policy design.

11. HMRC

    

    Challenge

    Understand the constraints and opportunities to design and transition to a more usable secure file transfer service between HMRC, businesses and wider central government departments.

    Work completed

    • Working closely with researchers to understand the needs of internal and external users and which areas were a priority to prototype, test and iterate
    • Extensive digital prototyping with GOV prototype kit
    • Usability testing and A/B testing during Beta
    • Design assurance

    Results

    A streamlined public service was delivered that was free to set up, more flexible and easier to use. This supported businesses to remain compliant with HMRC.

    Internally, by identifying common aspects of how new data requests where authorised we were able to optimise the process and reduce administrative time by an order of magnitude.

    A new internal pattern was developed to support the needs of internal users and is now available in HMRC pattern library.

12. HMRC

    

    Challenge

    The aim of the project was to protect HMRC from potential legal challenges and reputational damage. The system encrypted and securely stored specific transactions between HMRC and organisations or individuals. The key challenge was to design a file retrieval journey for accessing this encrypted data.

    Constraints

    • User research restricted due to purdah

    Work completed

    • Research with courts and prosecution process
    • Close collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and Fraud Investigation Service (FIS)
    • Digital prototyping (Gov prototype kit) and testing with a select group of security-cleared individuals to ensure a simple, accessible service.

    Results

    An MVP was defined and developed that explicitly recorded and allowed the retrieval of key digital transactions in the event of legal challenge.

13. HDowns

    

    Challenge

    To create the digital vision, web design and development for an established manufacturing company.

    Work completed

    • Creative direction, brand documentation, photography
    • Information architecture (navigation tree testing)
    • Responsive website design and development (validated HTML)
    • Web content accessibiltity guidelines (WCAG) standards compliant

    Results

    Following the successful delivery, year on year analytics demonstrated a substantial increase in mobile traffic, reduction in bounce rate and a notable uplift in sales enquiries.

14. Hertz / Air France

    

    Challenge

    Collaborating across a geographically dispersed team of technology providers, marketing and senior management, Hertz's hire car fulfilment website was required in partnership with Air France.

    Constraints

    • Technical platform

    Work completed

    • UI design
    • HTML template production

    Results

    Working within strict brand guidelines. Abandonment rates were significantly reduced through improved user experience.

15. Invoicer

    

    Challenge

    An internal project created over a 2 year period, providing professional, vector based PDF Invoices from CSV files.

    Work completed

    • User reasearch and requirements gathering
    • Prototype development and testing

    Results

    Built as a standalone system for freelancers and SMEs which can be customised into wider ERP / E-commerce projects. Invoicer is provided under MIT license and available on GitHub (opens in a new tab).

16. Imperium

    

    Challenge

    Responsible for planning, UX, UI, build and design assets of the website and CRM.

    Work completed

    • Responsive website design and development (validated HTML)
    • CRM integration

    Results

    Launched on time and budget. Developed to web standards using PHP, SASS and JQuery.

17. Corporate Mobility

    
    

    Challenge

    Over a 10-year period, leading the design and development team responsible for the inception and continuous improvement of a bespoke ERP system for a London based corporate relocation firm.

    Work completed

    • Research and planning
    • Requirements gathering
    • Information architecture
    • Service and process mapping
    • User journey mapping
    • Digital prototyping
    • Product roadmap
    • UI pattern library
    • Data visualisations / Dynamic PDF creation

    Results

    Continuous product development drove increased digital integration across multiple business areas, progressively enhancing the company's capabilities and operational efficiency. This enabled the business to scale up and expand its operations internationally through its web-based platform.

18. Phones International

    

    Challenge

    While on contract at Phones International over a 4 year period, websites were designed for Peter Jones’ ventures and numerous telecoms clients including Benq, Sony Ericsson and Vodafone.

    Work completed

    • UI design
    • HTML template production

    Results

    Working within strict brand guidelines. Conversion rates were significantly improved through improved user experience.