Turning St Giles Trust Lived Experience Model into a Digital Toolkit

The St Giles Trust is a UK-wide charity that helps people move forward from poverty, homelessness, addiction, and the criminal justice system. Central to their work is the belief that people who’ve been through those experiences are uniquely placed to help others facing the same. They call this their Lived Experience model, and it works — but it existed largely within the organisation. They wanted to change that.

Working with St Giles over the summer of 2025, ProMo Cymru helped them design and build a platform that could take this approach beyond their own teams and into the hands of organisations and individuals across the country.

Designing with purpose

We used a Service Design methodology from the start, which meant taking the time to understand what the platform actually needed to do before we began building it. We worked closely with St Giles staff to explore what good would look like, and their feedback shaped everything: the platform needed to be accessible, engaging, and genuinely practical for people who might be drawing on it in difficult circumstances.

One of the first decisions we made together was about the name. Rather than defaulting to something functional, we ran a Name Ideation Session with St Giles staff to find language that would feel right for the people it was designed for. The result — Experts by Experience: A Lived Experience Toolkit — puts the emphasis where it belongs, on what people know rather than what they’ve been through.

Building and testing

We selected WordPress as the platform, giving St Giles the flexibility and ease of management they’d need to keep the toolkit current long-term. The site was structured around three core areas: an introduction to the Lived Experience model, resources for organisations working alongside people with lived experience, and resources for individuals drawing on their own experiences to support others.

We used a co-design approach throughout the design process, building interactive prototypes in Figma and testing them with real users through Maze. Rather than iterating once and calling it done, we went through multiple rounds of feedback and refinement – because the difference between a platform that looks right and one that genuinely works often comes down to those rounds of testing.

Launching the toolkit

As the platform came together, we worked with St Giles to create a promotional campaign for the launch, including social media graphics and branding guidelines to give the toolkit a consistent presence. We followed that with a training session for St Giles staff, so they had the confidence to manage and update the platform independently going forward.

Following an international roadshow to promote the toolkit, St Giles are preparing for a full public launch.

“Thank you to the whole team, this has been a really enjoyable experience.” — Lucy Leighton, St Giles Trust

We can help you do the same

If you have an approach, a model, or a body of expertise that deserves a wider audience, we’d love to help you bring it to life. We offer consultancy and support for organisations looking to develop digital platforms that genuinely meet user needs. Get in touch.