Department for Education.
Referrals for care and services
Towards the beginning of my career I spent some time specialising in public sector / government type projects. My career started within local government and when I moved on from there into consultancy I found myself working as an Interaction Designer for the Department for Education.
At some point I'll need to revisit my folders to find the code and history for this project, but for now, you'll have to settle for a brief overview.
- GovUk Prototype Kit
- Interaction design
- Beta phase project
- Discovery
The Project
The Referrals for Care and Services project at the Department for Education had progressed to the Beta phase. For those unfamiliar, the UK Government Digital Service structures their projects into Alpha, Beta, and Public Beta phases to ensure digital services are user-centered, effective, and reliable before a full public launch.
These phases are integral to their service design and delivery lifecycle, helping teams validate ideas, refine solutions, and build confidence in the service's readiness.
Although the project was in Beta, the Alpha phase - where assumptions are tested and prototypes built - had not been completed. This meant that the Beta team I was part of had to take on the responsibilities of both Alpha and Beta phases before the project could be taken into assessment.
We were provided with discovery information indicating there was a problem to solve, but lacked insights into user needs, desires, technical feasibility, or any proof-of-concept prototypes.
The project was very new, with broad and unclear requirements, and limited access to subject matter experts. This presented me with a valuable opportunity to dive deep and explore the problems and potential solutions from every angle.
My role
I entered the project as an Interaction Designer without a vast knowledge of the GovUK Design System or Prototype Kit. What I did have was my development background and usability expertise.
It was my primary responsibility to create coded prototypes using the GovUK Prototype Kit and explore a variety of ways in which referrals for care or services could be made by teachers, care givers, guardians and service providers in local areas.
- Explore ideas
- Research and discovery
- Develop a working service
- Gather feedback
Over the course of six months, I researched existing referral solutions, integrating various local government approaches into a unified national online platform aligned with the Gov.uk Design System. I also maintained a historical log of sprint goals, documenting design and research outcomes that informed iterative improvements to the solution.
A key theme consistently emphasised was the need for standardisation and consistency in submissions, as well as structured data collection. This approach aimed to support local government social care teams in making referral decisions more systematically, with the potential to incorporate automation at a later stage.
Assessment
The project involved numerous complex legal challenges related to data governance and internal politics, which led our team to recommend that the project should not progress to Public Beta.
Our research revealed that local governments generally preferred:
- Qualitative data Submissions with as much detail as possible to ensure individuals in need were accurately referred to appropriate services.
- Avoiding multiple-choice input formats As these were perceived as impersonal and often conflicted with varying data governance standards across local authorities.
- To maintain control Controlling their own forms and submission methods, despite many not being digital by default - common formats included PDF forms, emails, and telephone calls.