Help to Grow

Background

The Department for Business and Trade run a campaign to help small business owners find their footing in business and help them sell to international markets, as part of their mandate to promote economic growth in the UK. They needed a central portal where small business owners can find out information that is relevant to them, aswell as linking off to resources on other websites.

They were looking to update the website in-line with an updated brand and content strategy. After a handful of user research sessions with small business owners, I developed some wireframes into high-fidelity mockups before presenting them to product managers at DBT.

Involvement

• Note-taker at multiple user research sessions, with a diverse range of business owners. From a jewellery dealer in Birmingham to a car dealership in Yorkshire. Noting user behaviour, what they did or didn't value among other insights. This informed content and design decisions.
• Build of wireframes and prototypes for user testing in Figma, working with the content designer.
• Delivery of mockups for stakeholder sign-off.
• Development team handover.

Language and feel

Direct, no-nonsense approach in both the content and the design. Very much content-first and user-centred, with some visual flourish using elements from the (business.gov.uk)[https://www.business.gov.uk/] design system, which was shared with us. We used some iconography and components from the library.

Challenges

• Navigation Integrating a navigation pattern on a website built on the gov.uk campaign platform, which imposes the gov.uk header.

• Cards The nature of the website as a portal meant that the cards and CTA's could link to external resources and articles, aswell as internal. So a challenge was designing a card that indicated wether or not it was an external link.
• Context-aware styling A row added to a page could either use a white, light grey or dark blue background colour. The implications of this meant that cards and other components that rely on colour to distinguish the boundaries would need to respond accordingly.

Outcome

A campaign site that delivered the needs of client, and ultimately the user — by providing a central portal for business owners to find useful information on running a business in the UK, and exporting internationally. Myself and the team involved received very positive feedback. Unfortunately it appears the website has been sunsetted, and the scheme divided into two separate entities — Help to Grow: Management, and Help to Grow: Digital.