Developing a single place for digital services at the DfE

Challenge

The Department for Education (DfE) needed a prototype website to answer an urgent request from the Secretary of State for a ‘single place’ that would provide a joined up experience of all educational digital services. The prototype had to be developed to the point where it could be used for demonstrations and in unmoderated testing with school leaders.

Our approach

In order to ensure the prototype met the main goals of the project, we followed a lean process of build, measure and learn to deliver it. This included integration with a CMS platform that would eventually enable DfE to produce content for everyone involved in education, such as students, teachers, parents and graduates.

In addition, we assisted with the user research by helping DfE to identify the people they needed to undertake this work and including our engineers in it, so we could pinpoint technology issues and future requirements. Involving our team in the research allowed us to understand and empathise with end users, so we could ensure the development strategy was defined around their needs.

Our ambition is that all our services will be user-centred by default, be of high quality and meet the standards of both digital government and the private sector, helping to save time and money.
From the DfE’s ‘Realising the potential of technology in education’ report

The results

By delivering a prototype that could be used for demonstration purposes and user testing, we were able to help the DfE test the proposition of a single place for education with school leaders. In addition to this delivery, we were able to assist with the planning and execution of the user research, and provide the organisation with technical recommendations for any future development.