👋 Design handover for Laura (new IxD)

[joe-horton-moj]

👋 Welcome to Find MoJ data, Laura

Contents:

1. Overview
2. Tools and workflow
3. Work I did during Private BETA
4. Next steps for an Interaction Designer

📖 Overview

📺 Loom video

Hi Laura, I am Joe – I was the Interaction Designer on the team from December 2024 to March 2025.

The service did not have an Interaction Designer on the project during the ALPHA phase, and one of the recommendations from the service assessment was to bring into the team. The team have not had a content designer.

✏️ Tools and workflow

📺 Loom video

Figma

→ Open Figma file

I have updated the Figma file from when it was last used in ALPHA by the service designer. I try and keep the main page up to date with the current build, and create a branch or use the sandbox when we are working on a new feature / improvement.

To do:

• update the Figma cover with your name as the owner
• ask Rob McCarthy if you cannot edit the file
• familiarise yourself with the desk research page to explore other data catalogues

GOV Prototype Kit

→ Open Prototype Repo in GitHub

For some pages, I created a GOV Kit Prototype. We don't use this for user research and it's not hosted so can only be viewed locally.

If you wanted to use it, you need to:

• ask Rob McCarthy to add you to the repo
• clone, install npm and enjoy prototyping! Tutorial and guides here

Miro

I used Miro for collecting design examples and doing a design review on the service. Other than that, it doesn't seem to be needed an awful lot on this project – we tend to discuss problems, mock up ideas in Figma, then build.

You might need to:

• ask Rob McCarthy if you cannot access the above Miro files

GitHub

We use GitHub to document most things. No Confluence, Jira or Sharepoint.

🗓️ Work I did during Private BETA

📺 Loom video

During my 3 months on the projects, I worked on:

• an overall design review of the service to ensure correct implementation of gov components and patterns
• improving the home page to make the subject areas easier to understand
• introducing the business glossary, and iterating on the search results UI

These are the key pieces of work I documented in the BETA assessment Miro deck
and also the Figma page, design documentation.

👩‍💻 Next steps for an Interaction Designer

Depending on the outcome and recommendations of the BETA service assessment, my suggested next steps might not be useful. However, these are what I think are the key areas to explore moving into Public BETA.

• Working with the Analytical Platform team to help improve the interaction between finding data and using that data in the Analytical Platform. Talking to Sabrina (content designer) who as I write is working on improving their user guide – would be a good place to start. Darren Rooke is the PM on that team.
• Consider ways in which we can get quicker feedback and insights from users – we have been developing different features and designs each sprint. However, we only test with a few users once a month. I have felt this has led to a few design assumptions without validating with users at the time in which we are solving them.
• Continuous work and collaboration with other data catalogue teams in GOV to ensure consistency and good design examples. Department for Business and Trade have a mature data platform and their UCD team would be happy to introduce you their designs, ways of working etc. (laura.wood@businessandtrade.gov.uk, researcher and ieuan.parker@digital.trade.gov.uk, designer)

[DeanWillicombe82]

Thanks for your work on this @joe-horton-moj