Interaction design for online government application

Directgov

Directgov (now GOV.UK) provide the people of the UK with a whole array of online services and information, covering topics such as crime and justice, benefits, driving and transport, employment and education. They came to us for help in developing an online tool for parents looking for schools for their children.

Through stakeholder research, we determined what the online service should offer and went on to build a fully interactive prototype to demonstrate exactly how it should work. We then recruited parents to test the prototype in a lab environment which proved hugely successful, allowing us to very quickly see how parents find and read information, and how the service would be most useful.

After producing a final report with our recommendations, we worked with a digital agency, bpi, to put together the schools finder tool. Our prototyping and testing made the design and development process, for what is quite a complex tool, much simpler, quicker and more cost-effective.