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DWP content design principles

These principles are not only useful for content designers to think about, but also colleagues working in all of the areas that touch content design - service teams, policy, communications and operations.

If you're new to content design as a profession, here are some excellent articles which help explain what we do.

Service development phases

Services go through discovery, alpha, private beta and public beta phases before they go live.

Depending upon their size, services may have to be assessed before they can go on to the next phase.

As part of their assessment, services have to show how they've made content decisions based on user research and analytics.

Content designers can – and usually should – be involved in service development at each of these stages.

These are some of the things a Content Designer can be doing at each agile project phase.

Discovery phase

Learn about your users, your subject and existing content.

  • Finding the words people use (Google Analytics, Adwords and Trends, online forums, social media).
  • Attending user research (listen to phone calls, meet users, observe how they interact with current services).
  • Finding gaps or problems with existing content (GOV.UK Feedex and other existing feedback).
  • Building your knowledge of the subject and understand the policy intent (work with stakeholders, policy and subject matter experts).
  • Helping your team define their focus (write problem statements, mission statements and service descriptions).

Alpha phase

Build prototypes, design and iterate content.

  • Creating or updating prototypes (using GOV.UK prototype kit, Heroku and Git).
  • Writing and testing letters, text messages, emails and other notifications.
  • Following GOV.UK and DWP design patterns and styles (share new patterns and research with other designers in DWP and across government).
  • Designing GOV.UK start and done pages and testing with users.
  • Testing GOV.UK content with users to cover the whole journey.
  • Working with legal and security to understand constraints on content.
  • Sharing content and research for GOV.UK start, done and guidance pages with the GDS content team.
  • Helping business analysts and product owners to write clear user stories.

Beta phase

Design the content for your first release.

  • Designing error and validation messages.
  • Showing when the online service is unavailable.
  • Explaining how the service uses cookies and collects personal data.
  • Writing feedback questions to help the team learn about the user's experience.
  • Translating content into Welsh (the Welsh language team can give you this).
  • Working with GDS content team on GOV.UK start, done and guidance pages (for launch of public beta).
  • Writing metadata descriptions and keywords to help users find the right service and improve search engine rankings.
  • Iterating content based on feedback from users, design hypotheses and analytics.
  • Helping your team to name the service.

Live phase

Continue to iterate the service content.

  • Using feedback and analytics to inform changes or discover new user needs to explore.

Who we work with

When building services, we work in agile delivery teams. Agile is about building things quickly, testing them and changing them based on continual feedback.

Each agile team should be made up of or have access to a:

  • product owner
  • user researcher
  • interaction designer
  • content designer
  • front-end developer
  • back-end developer
  • technical architect

These roles are collaborative; you don't design content alone.

Agile teams are to a large extent self-organising and work in different ways. You'll find out more when you join your own team.

This way of working is still new to the department. An important part of your role is to encourage teams to work in this way.