user needs – Caerleon Consulting

How we delivered more than 1,500 digital export journeys

Liam Bancroft, a Product Owner in the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) Borders and Trade team, shares his insights into the work he has been leading to develop a digital service for those seeking to export animals and animal …

January 22, 2025adminDefra interaction, Defra service design, Defra services, digital, exports, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Solving problems, sharing knowledge: Defra’s content community resources

Ayesha Tinsley explains how her team improved the content community’s resources board, in the last in our series on Defra content community projects.

January 14, 2025admincommunities of practice, content design, Defra content design, Defra digital, digital, User centred design, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Transforming Defra together: the journey from paper to online forms

It’s been a busy year for Defra Forms. Lead Product Manager Jenny Taylor and Senior Content Designer Anna Scott reflect on the story so far, lessons learnt and reaching the exciting step of rolling out forms guidance and tools access …

December 12, 2024adminAccessibility, content design, Defra content design, Defra Forms, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

What a content designer does in alpha

Kaitlin D’Avella explains what content designers do in the alpha stage of a project.

October 17, 2024adminAccessibility, agile, Defra content design, Defra digital, Defra services, digital, User centred design, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Defra group digital and data transformation strategy: how we’re making our services better

David Caldwell, Defra’s Deputy Director for Digital Transformation, provides an update on the work underway to transform digital services in Defra. It has been a while since we last shared what we’re doing to transform our services. I took up …

October 8, 2024adminDefra digital, Defra services, digital, services, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Creating an online form to apply for a county parish holding (CPH) number

Senior content designer Alice Wilson writes about how she worked with the Defra Forms team to create a more accessible online version of a PDF form for livestock keepers.

October 2, 2024adminAccessibility, Defra content design, Defra digital, Defra Forms, digital, Digital transformation, User centred design, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

How we are leading a bold and innovative approach to online forms

Jenny Taylor explains how the Defra Forms team has launched a new way to provide accessible online forms that meet a broad range of user needs across the Defra group and ends our ongoing reliance on paper-based forms.

September 26, 2024adminAccessibility, Defra digital, Defra service design, digital, User centred design, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

How Defra are finding accessibility participants for user research

User researcher Jason Stockwell explains how, as a Participant Lead, his job is to make sure user researchers have the right processes in place to get access to participants for research rounds.

May 16, 2024adminAccessibility, User centred design, user needs, User researchDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Accessibility tools we use every day

To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we’re sharing some of our content design team at Defra’s go-to accessibility tools and guides. We’re all responsible for making sure our content and services are accessible, these are some of the resources we use to help with that.

May 16, 2024adminAccessibility, Defra content design, Defra digital, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales

Greener services hack day: Part One

In the first post of a two-part blog, content designers Natalie Smithson and Sandeep Dhaliwal look forward to today’s hack day, being led by Defra’s planet-centred design team – one of many activities for Services Week 2024.

March 22, 2024adminDefra digital, Defra service design, Defra services, services, User centred design, user needsDEFRA, Digital, GOV, Wales