My first challenge as a new starter with MOJ Digital Services: improve content design for the employment tribunals (ET) exemplar. The exemplar is currently published as Beta , but as you’d expect from a Beta version, it needs some tweaking.
Our primary challenge was how could we accurately reword complex legalese and provide a service in plain English without losing any of the legal necessities or nuances. We knew this would be no mean feat as it would involve having to effect a culture change firmly based on user needs while keeping our partners on board.
Our colleagues in HMCTS had a positive attitude to our recommended approach, which appears to have been applied to a group of policy documents due for publication outside the GOV.UK environment… so we must be doing something right.
We worked closely with UX colleagues – naturally so because we’re agile and collaborate in multi-disciplinary teams. Based on user testing analysis, we refined and reworked around 27 pages of the ET form and then tested them on real people. Users gave the thumbs up to rewritten questions about types of claim to help work out their fee.
We also introduced new content to the sevice and GOV.UK guidance, alerting users to the need to go down the conciliation route with Acas before going to a tribunal.
As a first project, it was quite a baptism of fire but it was great to work - and learn - alongside such a varied and effective skillset within the ET team. So many thanks to Liz Citron, Tom Dolan, Sarah Herman, Trent Greenwood, Helen Mott, Sjors Timmer and Claire Perry (fellow new starter and content designer).
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