Recent articles

Designing impactful conversational products with defensive design

Designing conversations successfully relies on designers explaining the boundaries of products to users.

Published on 26 Apr 2020

How we crafted a design language for hundreds of services across government

Creating consistent guidance that could be used across government when designing services for government staff users.

Published on 1 Mar 2020

How to design government services at scale

How we helped reduce inefficiencies in the design process in government, and increased collaboration and sharing to improve design workflows.

Published on 19 Feb 2018

Waiting for the next peak

Thoughts on building How Do and how hard progress is to find sometimes. And the joy you get from the small wins.

Published on 1 Dec 2018

Shallow by design

The problem with big tech at the moment. And too many decisions being made without fully considering the impact those decisions will have.

Published on 20 June 2018

Prototype training: what we teach and what we've learnt

I teach a lot of people how to prototype in code and these are the things I've learnt along the way.

Published on 24 Nov 2017

Creating common ground with design standards

How I helped 700 teams around the UK government build better services by documenting common design patterns (starting a design system).

Published on 25 July 2017

Using fear to fuel change

Using my anxiety to push me to start something new.

Published on 18 June 2017

Make an impression the right way

Advice on how to make a good impression when applying for a design position, from my experience of reviewing hundreds of job applications.

Published on 13 May 2017

A better way to design success

A list of some of some best traits that I’ve observed in every good designer I’ve worked with.

Published on 29 Mar 2017

Sharing design patterns to work smarter

How do we share learnings to make better decisions in the future? Here are some things we did in government to collaborate better.

Published on 8 Sep 2016

Designing with an accessible mindset

Designing for everyone is a constant challenge but considering the needs of all users in design decisions becomes easier the more you do it.

Published on 19 May 2016

Designing your design process

How I explained my design process to a junior designer who joined our team in government.

Published on 13 May 2016

Empathy and Design

Designers solve problems and we are best placed to do this when we can understand who our users are and empathise with what they want to do.

Published on 28 Mar 2016