News

The Dementia UK site offers information and support for people affected by dementia. Shivy reviewed the usability and experience of three aspects of the site: Navigation  Homepage Helpline page We’ve made that feedback open so you and others can learn from it. Part 1. Navigation review Dementia UK weren’t sure if their site navigation was […]

“I recommend you do user testing, because you are not the user of your website” – Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group – the pioneers of website research If you believe your website needs redesigning, or if you’re mid-way through designing a new one then you should test its usability with your users. Testing your website […]

November last year, I experienced a productivity miracle.  I found a way to build websites four times quicker. Literally. A website that would have taken a month now took a week. And the quality improved too. The HTML (code) was cleaner. It didn’t feel like we were accumulating technical debt.  Now, I’ve spent the last […]

Over the years, we’ve talked a lot about user-centred design. But should the user really be at the centre? In the real world, there isn’t a single end user.  Human beings are complex and live in an interconnected system. What happens when we become aware that services should not solely be designed to meet the […]

…Imagine: all the smiles, all the chit chat, all the cups of tea and all the biscuits… all the relational wellbeing developed everyday by almost 200,000 UK charities. Well, the tap has been turned off.  Deepr, a Catalyst partner, are working out how to turn it back on, online. And they’ve some early ideas to […]

We recently kicked off a new project, working alongside Catalyst, to create the second version of a classification system for the charity sector.  Yep, that’s a big sentence. There’s a lot to unpack there. The project itself is fascinating, the scope is challenging, and the various stakeholders, previous work completed and partners make it a […]

In my last article, I gave you a simple process for ensuring your user stories are actionable, valuable and measurable using the INVEST framework. Using this framework is helpful because it saves you wasting time, budget and resources due to user stories that are unclear or too big. You will be able to easily tell […]

In 2017, We Are With You had a problem to solve. Their users were struggling to find the advice and support they needed on their website. The site was full of content but hard to navigate. Stephanie Keenan, the charity’s digital lead, was committed to finding a solution by using a ‘test and learn’ approach. […]

Editor’s intro: Last month we shared seven insights from GOV.UK’s former Design Director, Lou Downe. Today we are publishing in full their introduction to the Good Services Scale. This is relevant for charities because it’s the first attempt we’ve seen to create a scale based on what users need from a service, rather than what […]

Over the last 10 years user stories have become an integral part of the research and design process I follow. They help organisations to be user-centered and meet their users’ objectives.  User stories are simple statements that focus on what the user wants to achieve. They define the audience/situation, motivation and expectation that a person […]

Last week we wrote about how three civil society organisations worked with NoCode to improve their digital services. NoCode refers to a collection of apps which allow you to develop digital services without having to write code. Instead, you assemble it from building blocks. NoCode may lack some flexibility compared to writing code yourself, but […]

Like many charities, we’ve been adapting our face to face offerings for online. That includes Design Hops, our free half-day service design training. We’ve learnt a lot already from this process. In this article, we share our key insights and top tips for moving face to face training online. Use your existing knowledge and skills […]