Case studies

Key examples of how my content design and strategy experience have helped clients to achieve their goals:

Essex County Council

Essex County Council’s Essex Schools InfoLink provides guidance and support to education professionals and parents across the region.

When I joined the project, the website was:

• overloaded with inaccessible documents
• difficult to navigate as it mixed information for staff and public users

I was engaged to help the ECC digital team understand the volume of work involved in migrating content for education professionals to a new platform, and to recommend now inaccessible documents could be published in a different format.

To gauge the challenge involved in the migration, my work included:

• auditing all content to identify incorrect, duplicate and outdated staff content
• collaborating with subject matter experts and service teams to evaluate published pages, and creating new streamlined content that was led by the needs of users
• suggesting new ways to publish inaccessible documents in HTML or as open documents

Essex County Council’s new website for education professionals, Education Essex Online, is now live.

The groundwork I did at the outset of the project was used by the council to plan resourcing and engage content support. I also helped the project by:

• identifying over 1,000 pages that could be immediately deleted from the site
• developing a strategy for publishing accessible documents that was used to reformat new content and help the council meet its accessibility goals

Buckinghamshire Council

The Buckinghamshire Council website provides essential services and information to residents across the county.

When I joined the project, council content was spread across four district sites, which made it confusing for users to find the information they need.

I was engaged as part of a team to migrate content to the new unitary council website, and to create fresh content that was up-to-date, factually correct and led by the needs of users.

I was also responsible for migrating, updating and rewriting content for Buckinghamshire Council’s Family Information Service (FIS) microsite, with a special focus on developing content for parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

To achieve the council’s goals, my work included:

The new FIS microsite was published by Buckinghamshire Council in February 2021.

I helped to reduce the volume of content by two thirds, and ensure all content is aimed at core users and easy to understand.

The SEND content I developed was welcomed by the Local Offer Advisory and Impact Group – an independent body of parents and healthcare workers in Buckinghamshire that oversees all SEND content published by the council.

British Red Cross

The British Red Cross helps millions of people in the UK and around the world to get support if crisis strikes. 

When I joined the project, the charity’s website had not been updated for over seven years and featured over 4,000 pages – 59% of which had not been viewed in over 12 months.

It was hard for users to navigate the site and find the information they were looking for, which had a negative effect on donations and blocked disadvantaged people from requesting the support they need.

I was employed as part of a team to create content for a major website relaunch, and to introduce content design methodology so that all pages were:

I took responsibility for all fundraising, donation and corporate partnership content, and worked closely with with subject matter experts, user researchers and business analysts across the organisation to streamline categories and improve the user experience.

To achieve the charity’s goals, my responsibilities included:

• auditing existing pages to identify outdated, duplicate and overlapping content
• collaborating with subject matter experts to understand and document user needs
• writing user-led, accurate and engaging new content

I also worked with UX designers to ensure the new site templates were flexible and suited a wide variety of content.

By the end of the project the total number of pages on the British Red Cross site had been reduced from 4,000 to 350, the content was logically ordered and simple to understand, and it was easier than ever for users to ask for support or help people in need.

Department for Education

The UK government Department for Education (DfE) website is a vital tool for teachers and parents to find information, guidance and support.

But as a large volume of this content was produced by subject matter experts in PDF format, it can be difficult for users to access guidance on the move or search documents to find the information they need.

As a content designer at DfE I collaborated with teams across the department to convert a series of PDF governance guides into a single online manual that was searchable, viewable on mobile devices, and easy to update.

To help DfE achieve its goals, my responsibilities included:

• collaborating with subject matter experts to understand and document user needs
• editing the PDF guides and splitting the content into sections that were intuitive and simple to navigate
• editing complex content so it was easier for users to understand

The Further education corporations and sixth-form college corporations: governance guide now gives users access to important information wherever they need it.

The digital format also makes it easier for the department’s communications team to update the guidance to reflect policy changes, and since its launch the manual has received no negative comments via GOV.UK’s user feedback system.