Joe Lanman - Designer
Register to vote
In 2013 the UK Government Digital Service had moved government information from many different sites to one: GOV.UK. It won Design of the Year.
The next step was creating online government services - a collection of 25 ‘exemplars’ to set out good practice for interaction and service design. Register to vote was one of the first to go live.
It was the first time people could register to vote online, replacing an outdated paper form where people could only register as a ‘household’.
The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones called it “a commendably clear and simple process”.
My role
I joined the team after a successful ‘alpha’ phase, and led the design in the 'beta' phase.
My work included:
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Using a mobile-first design, pioneering a 'one thing per page' approach. Initially we were going to combine more pages on desktop, but through research we found that 'one thing per page' worked well for everyone. It keeps each screen simple and easy to deal with.
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Designing many of the patterns that would later go into the GOV.UK Design System, such as how to ask for a date of birth, error validation and Check your answers.
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Prototyping in code, meaning we could test in real browsers both on mobile and desktop, and test with disabled people using assistive tech such as screen readers and screen magnifiers.