Recently, we’ve supported a few councils on developing their service directories. We’ve learned that while it’s fairly straightforward to make a service directory, making a good one can be difficult.

It’s not enough to show people the services near them, Google Maps can do that. To make a directory effective…

Decoupled websites can be pretty great. The idea is simple: make pre-rendered static webpages ahead of time and put them on a web server. The result is speedy, secure and trendy.

The advantages come from doing the hardest, slowest work at build time rather than request time. In a traditional…

Hello!

I’m a non-binary designer and web developer, and I’m looking to start mentoring one (or a small number of) junior folks.

I’ve got six-ish years experience and work mostly with local government and charities in the UK.

I was a bit of a career changer too — I started…

Much of our lives, and the lives of people we create services for, revolve around the unique context of our places. Our communities and neighbourhoods, perhaps now more than we ever realised before, are more than where we live but also where people work, socialise and learn. A common need…

Enterprise content management tools have traditionally been a bit rubbish.

The experience for content authors was often particularly awkward: writing pseudo-HTML by hand and hoping that the results might bear some resemblance to the intended design.

The new WordPress block editor can help us change that. It’s an experience more…

The revision history feature in Google Docs is pretty useful. With the ability to intuitively see how versions differ from each other and restore old versions in a couple of clicks, it’s a big enabler of collaborative work.

The legacy apps we’re used to replacing might include a rudimentary edit…

A common problem in directory-style apps is representing the opening hours of a business or service. It’s easy to provide a simple text input and move on. But, if we want to power a Google Maps-style “open now” feature, we need to use a more structured format.

In this example…

There’s seemingly a new design tool out every week, but Figma has some unique features that put it above the rest, and make it a particularly good fit given the restrictions of the public sector.

First, I’m not associated with Figma, I just like it. My go-to design tool used…