Funding index: bridging the existing and new statement experience

Bringing the old and the new together

Our minimum valuable product (MVP) data-driven statement successfully went live for our adult funding beta group in April 2026. We then needed to look at the onboarding and navigation journey for users as we introduced further features (payment schedules and histories and calculations) and roll the pattern out to funding streams beyond adult.

To support a phased rollout across 9 remaining funding streams, we needed a way for education providers to access newly data-driven allocation statements without losing access to the existing experience. Our research highlighted an important user need for education providers accessing legacy data:

• As an education provider data/finance manager, I need to easily locate my latest data-driven statements while retaining access to historical statements for audits and financial planning.

The existing experience also continues to be important as it contains general annual grant (GAG) statements, legacy adult skills fund statements and payment history data which falls outside of funding streams.

The existing MYESF experience organises funding information by document type (for example allocation statements, payment history, contracts), mixing different funding streams together. To align with providers’ ways of working as shown in previous user research, our new data driven pattern organises documents by funding stream and period, in a ‘hub and spoke’ pattern.

As it wasn’t technically feasible to transfer legacy data into the new service, we needed to design a solution which enabled providers to access both.

Exploring solutions and testing iterations

We explored several navigation concepts, sharing iterations with the DfE user centred design (UCD) community for design crits and conducting iterative rounds of user research (UR) with adult education providers.

Iteration 1: standalone home page tile and simple list index

Our first iteration added a new ‘funding information’ card on the MYESF home page that allowed access to the new experience, alongside the existing cards. This led to a funding index page, which displayed a list of statements, with funding stream name and funding period displayed in reverse chronological order.

We wanted to understand whether users could intuitively discover and navigate to the new data-driven experience from the home page when presented with a standalone tile, locate current and historical adult skills fund allocations, and compare version histories.

In UR round 1, users completely missed the new tile. They relied on existing mental models, navigating straight into familiar ‘allocation statements’ or ‘payment history’ tiles. This resulted in initial navigation errors and trial-and-error behaviour. However, once on the funding index page, users navigated effortlessly and understood how to access consolidated funding information. We were confident that the funding index concept worked – the challenge now was to refine the user journey to get there.

Iteration 2: Service banner and multi-criteria triage

Our second iteration:

• introduced a GOV.UK notification banner on the home page with a direct link to the funding index concept that had tested well in round 1
• updated the primary ‘allocation card’ copy
• introduced a triage page with radio button questions, allowing users to navigate to the current or new experiences based on selecting both funding streams and publication dates

The triage page was an existing concept within MYESF – already used for providers who receive both GAG and adult funding, allowing them to navigate between the two, separate statement areas.

Testing showed that updating the allocation card title and allowing access to statements through this familiar ‘front door’ supported user understanding, but the multi-criteria triage page (funding stream and publication date) created high cognitive load and confusion.

The link inside the notification banner also confused users. They expected primary card containers to drive navigation rather than text links in an alert.

We observed that publication dates served as the primary anchor for users when trying to find the information they needed.

Iteration 3: Simplified triage and refined cards

Our third iteration aimed to improve on the second to remove confusion. We reviewed the user journey and ‘logic flow’ between the current experiences for adult and GAG statements, and the new experience. Reversing the placement of our new triage page and the existing GAG triage page enabled us to reduce triage decision down to a single question based solely on publication date, echoing providers’ mental models, and reducing cognitive load.

We removed the link from the banner (using it purely to update users on the introduction of the new experience and features rather than a navigation tool), and shortened the primary ‘allocation card’ copy to fit MYESF fixed layout constraints.

We explored search filters and pagination for the funding index page. However, UR had confirmed that a simple list was easy enough for users to scan, even when it was long (we tested with 14 links). It was agreed that filters would add complexity we felt was unnecessary and pagination would limit cross-year comparisons, which was a key user behaviour.

This design prioritised scalability with data driven features and became our MVP solution: a 3 step navigation journey that allows providers to navigate between the existing and new experience.

1. MYESF home page updates:

• service update banner providing context about newly available data-driven statements
• allocation card content - explicitly stating that allocations, payment schedules, and payment histories are now accessible by funding stream

2. A date-based triage page with:

• a radio button asking users to pick whether they are looking for information published before or after the data-driven adult statements went live

3. A data-driven funding index page with:

• a clean, structured page listing all active data-driven funding streams
• ordering primarily by funding period (academic year, newest first), then by publication date, and alphabetically for identical dates
• links directly out to individual funding stream hub pages, giving access to digital allocation statements, payment schedules, and payment histories

Next steps and future considerations

As we move into onboarding additional funding streams, we have documented the following scalability considerations:

1. Banner content maintenance: content will need updating to reflect the onboarding of future funding streams – data-driving this information could be considered.
2. Revisiting filters and pagination: when providers manage 10+ funding streams over multiple financial years, we should reevaluate whether the page is still easy to navigate for providers, and consider whether filter controls are required .
3. Triage logic update once GAG is onboarded: as the GAG statements already live on MYESF the logic and date for the triage page will need to be updated to reflect the date that the GAG data driven experience goes live.
4. Eventual triage retirement: as legacy statements age out of active use, the triage step should be decommissioned so users land directly on the funding index page from the allocations tile.