Good digital services are built with the web in mind. They use the things online platforms are good at to provide quick, simple, accessible experiences:

  • Users can be served the content they need at the time they need to see it.
  • They can be guided to questions they need to answer and shielded from those they don't.
  • Interactive navigation means that users can find what they need using logical steps.

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This kind of design respects a user's time and effort, leaving them free to focus on more important things - in our case, improving outcomes for young people.

But it only works if a service is designed for the web from the ground-up.

Designed for docs

Our as-is service was not built this way. Its content matches the layout of an older Word document version of the form.

The 'additional details page' next to the same section of the older Word doc form.

Documents like these are read in a linear way from top to bottom and a reader will generally encounter everything that's written.

The writer doesn't need to worry about navigation, so their content is usually grouped according to the easiest way to write it, not the easiest way to read it.

Unbreaking the directions

When a digital service is built around content intended for another format, it stops it from making use of what the web is good at and makes navigation harder.

And navigation problems of this type are really hard to undo.

Imagine a friend writes some instructions to help you find a shop you want to visit:

  1. Walk out of your house and turn left
  2. Take your third left turn
  3. Take your second right turn
  4. At the crossing, go straight ahead
  5. Take your first left turn
  6. The shop is 100 metres on the left

Now imagine you move to a different town.

Those instructions no longer work, and changing one or two steps probably won't get you any closer to where you need to be. You'll need a brand new set of directions.

The as-is build of the Apply to become an academy service also has navigation issues that can't be fixed in pieces. They stem from poor content grouping and are deeply embedded.

This is why we chose to build a new version of the service from the ground up.

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