Tag: gds

  • Use the right tools

    Use the right tools

    Matt Gemmell writes about the tools to facilitate his writing. These tools have been selected to meet the specific needs for the three phases of his writing process (which loosely match the GDS agile phases of discovery, alpha and beta). Just as Matt has specialist tools for each phase (GoodNotes, MindNode and Ulysses), my own…

  • User centred design, the GDS way.

    User centred design, the GDS way.

    I was recently in Brighton where the city council hosted a Government Digital Service session on user centered design. Here are things I found most interesting.

  • New guy

    New guy

    There’s a new guy where I work, he’s been here a month now. After 7 incredible, fun and fulfilling years at @gdsteam I'm leaving to become Chief Digital Officer at @yourcroydon from Oct. Croydon's regeneration, growing tech sector and digital ambition are hugely exciting and l'm looking forward to helping my fabulous home borough. —…

  • Digital services – doing the hard work for you.

    Digital services – doing the hard work for you.

    One of the more ambitious design principles of the the Government Digital service is number four: Do the hard work to make it simple. But it’s not all about digitising complex processes, it’s often about the little things that make a difference, like this little calculation at the bottom of a restaurant bill, noticed by Ben…

  • Presenting practical presentations

    Presenting practical presentations

    “Death by powerpoint” is a phrase I’ve heard from someone at some point wherever I’ve worked. Hopefully if you work at GDS, or spend a lot of time attending events where someone from GDS is presenting this isn’t the case. Here’s Russell Davies explaining why: Doing the hard work to make it big and Doing the hard work…

  • Featured Video Play Icon

    Government digital services as a platform. Yes please.

    Yes to all of this: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/29/government-as-a-platform-the-next-phase-of-digital-transformation/ [youtube]https://youtu.be/ZzPU6Pdw05s[/youtube] And this needs to be just the start for the public sector.

  • Plain English for international readers

    The team developing the visit visa service at gov.uk recently blogged about some testing with international users over a screencast which gave them some great insights from the kind of cultures and language challenges the service faced. Something that stood out for me was this paragraph: Unsurprisingly, language proved one of the biggest areas for feedback.…