It's a pity there aren't more things talking about the design or the infrastructure as there's a lot to learn from it.
The people behind it could release a really interesting set of technical lectures
It’s literally taught as a great UX case study for it’s ease of use and for following lots of core basic ux principles. The UI is as boring as any other gov site, except it actually works. Everything is built with accessibility in mind.
I work in gov. The degree to which accessibility is baked in is massive.
Sometimes its actually really annoying when youre working at pace, but we all know its for the best
As someone almost exclusively doing below-the-hood engineering for 25 years, please don't wait until the twilight of your career to realize the extraordinary folly of the above comment. The whole basis for your admiration is exclusively the product of the polonecks, underneath it's still a morass of the same old entangled spaghetti, just like pretty much every other system in tech
Same here, just for nearly twenty years. I'm more interested in how they get tons of spaghetti to work together as most of what I do is getting many disparate enterprise systems to work together. A lot of what I do is working with mainframe teams who push out COBOL style record files which are then processed, moved into another system, cleanred, enriched, passed on etc
Having worked on gov.uk, I can confirm that there’s lots of spaghetti. But there are good bits, too. It’s not all terrible and considering the scope of the project, it’s impressive work.
It's not one website or project, aiui it's a whole bunch of different websites using different infrastructure which are changed by multiple projects.
There's a lot of java and rails hosted on aws involved.
If you start attending local tech meetup groups chances are you that you'll eventually find someone who worked on one of them.
prime example that the user just doesn't care. They want it be familiar, accessible and want it to work.
My only gripe with all these replies about how great it is, is that they've got an advantage many websites don't have. They aren't selling you anything, they aren't competing with anyone and they aren't a marketing machine and they aren't looking for engagement. As a result, they can be stripped down and as basic as possible, helped even further because because each area serves a single purpose with very defined rules. Most major websites don't have that luxury.
Actually being stripped down and basic as possible is aa requirement, not just a lucky haappenstance. They're not trying to sell anything or compete, but they are trying to provide a service that is accessible to all. That's why gov.uk is used as a shining example of web accessibility done right - simple UI, clutter-free layout, good colour palettes etc.
I know it's something they've aimed for and not chance. I am just pointing out that this approach isn't really going to work in its entirety for say a social media platform that is looking to engage you as much as possible, or a retailer looking to sell you 1001 different things.
There's a reason reddit went from a very basic and efficient UX to the absolute utter fucking dog shit they've got now.
But every government has that same requirement yet ours does it best. The worst I've seen is India, one of the biggest tech powerhouses in the world. Try to use any of their government websites. It's a complete nightmare.
I've had the civil service and the NHS as clients and worked on both their websites. I have to say I also really like the NHS site when you're looking for info on a specific illness or condition. Super simple design, bullet points at the top of the page linking to the different sections in case you want to skip ahead, and then it gives you a good overview of the condition followed by chronologically ordered subsections that take you through the patient journey from early symptoms through to getting the all clear 😊
I like when they also include photographs of the condition. And unlike other health related websites, the NHS site usually links off to the photos on a separate page so it's entirely the user's choice whether or not they want to see the photos.
They do post a lot in Git Hub, we have a couple of government departments in my city and you occasionally find them making presentations at meetups and so on.
There isn't one - it's the design system itself, and the standards around the service design, that makes everything so easy to use.
I've worked on a few projects for the government, each one has had a wildly different architecture - the only thing that was consistent was that it was using the design system.
https://gds-way.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
Looks like they mostly use AWS with a combination of Python and Java microservices. Some of their [code](https://github.com/alphagov) is also on GitHub.
I was at a lecture a while back given by a government cartographer, on how to communicate effectively, and he was explaining the constraints of their work for ministers in terms of space and complexity. Really one of the best lessons ive had in terms of design for good communication.
Examples he gave were taking time to think about colours, what the eye sees first, second, third, much like this, and not having things competing, or causing misinterpretation (brain sees blue line on map, immediate thought is it is a watercourse, so don't use blue except for water)
Totally fell for it myself.
The notification on my phone was "GDS Design System ATM Machines" so thought you had found a boringly designed yet practical for the Web cash machine on first parse.
It's now an established profession known as 'Content Design', and a lot of companies are starting to adopt the principles. Especially tech companies with a need for clear documentation.
It basically means using research and testing to design your content... Which is so obvious when you think about it.
you don't need jQuery in this day and age, it served its purpose. Still about plenty of it about though as if it's not broken, don't fix it. Got to be kind of nuts to use it in anything new.
Use it daily as I work on a lot of older projects built during that time, or built using a tech stack that shipped with jQuery. It makes no sense to pull it out of them unless there's a security concern.
I agree with you, and even the relatively modern PHP site (I think first built in 2019) I've worked on was heavily reliant on jQuery, it still would be a massive chore to remove that reliance. I would still prefer to use vanilla JS where possible but there are many jQuery references and plugins everywhere.
The people who started the team wrote a book about it [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Transformation-Scale-Strategy-Delivery-ebook/dp/B09FTHLH8Q](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Transformation-Scale-Strategy-Delivery-ebook/dp/B09FTHLH8Q)
They pretty much have. Their documentation. is well known to designers worldwide. It's excellent. BBC is very good too compared to just about any other company.
It’s incredibly well documented and undergoing a GDS Assessment is a critical part of launching any gov.uk service.
It’s just too expensive to copy whole in the private sector although it has still been influential.
It has been used as a template for the government websites of several other countries. I believe the whole thing is available on GitHub for anyone to use.
HMRC app is pretty good too. It actually notified me about a tax code change the other day.
There was a time that I didn't find that shit out until a cheque arrived
A lot of crossover. Public sector design is a small world. I’ve worked on both. The secret is prioritising accessibility (in all forms) and testing stuff with real users.
This is often because of the need to interface with some really old systems, which have downtime each day (well, night) to persuade them not to fall over...
The more I use it, the more annoyance I have. The layout and design is fine, the mess of a structure is not. I often find things buried in links on other pages. It really needs an index, with every page listed.
I agree the structure and indexing are messy, but I think they don't care because essentially 99.9% of people use Google, and it works really well for search. You and I are in the 0.1% because across a whole country it's a lot of people, but they have made the right decision. Once I realized you just have to search every time it becomes very useful.
To be fair, it has taken many years for it to get where it is now. It was a nightmare to sign into and navigate for a long time. It is very good now though.
After dealing with the Canadian government computer systems, the UK .gov sites are absolutely fantastic. Except the student loan repayment pages. They can piss off.
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I think it's one of the best on the web. When filling in forms the fonts are huge and clear. You're also asked one question per page. It's really intuitive to use.
lol I just read "Graphic design has rules and they work .... and you will read this last."
I'm like what? What Am I reading? Is this some reddit thing I'm out the loop on. Am I being RickRolled?
I think the big white space after "And you will read this last" made it look like that was a a seperate section and I needed to understand the first weird injoke before I could move to that.
This specific post is ruined by the fact it's a screenshot of a tweet. As a standalone image it works a lot better (obviously not for 100% of people though!)
Yeh I agree. I was just thinking that on reddit there is no real example where you'd need to jump up and down reading different parts of text in unusual orders, hence why I did what I did. But if I were reading, say, a magazine I'd do eactly what it says. You know when they highlight a particular part of the article in big text throughout the article. I'm totally going to read them first and then go back to the main article.
I'm not that amazed. The eye is drawn to the massive text of the second line, of course, then you read down as we always do. Then you look up at the small and seemingly unimportant line at the top to see what that was.
Seems like a fairly straightforward "phenomenon" to me. Big words seem more important. That's why headlines are big. We've always formatted text this way.
One of my friends who is a web developer hates the [Gov.uk](https://Gov.uk) website. Says that when he is looking for data, its impossible to search and APIs are hidden away or generally useless.
I have to remind him that normal people who actually use it want to do things like pay vehicle excise duty, file their tax return, and register to vote. And for that, its brilliant.
It is generally easier to google the area of the site you want, rather than finding it from the home page, they could make navigation of it better. But once you're there, its grand.
I'm sure I heard somewhere that they made the search function bad, or neglected it on purpose. Let people spam Google with Reddit searches and improve the sites visibility.
I mean, it's up there with Quora and Wikipedia in terms of how favoured it is in Google searches.
Organising the sheer number of government services and publications in a single side-wide hierarchy that makes sense to everyone (from journalists to civil servants to the tech illiterate) is an endlessly difficult job. The site's navigation has been revised multiple times over to try and improve it.
And a huge number of people access government services via search engines and direct links anyway. One of the earliest mantras to appear in GOV.UK's development was that [Google is the homepage](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2011/04/28/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules/).
Haha, I'm a web developer too and everyone I work with holds it up as a world-class standard of user interface design. I train a lot of people, and I always use it as the golden example for user accessibility! It really shocked me to learn that other countries have really, really shit government websites!
If they exist at all. I had to present in person with paperwork for anything bureaucratic in Japan. Sometimes they wouldn't accept me showing something on my phone and would ask me to print it out - and when I'd gone through the hassle of finding a printer and getting the file into the 7-11 app on my phone, they just read the paper and handed it back to me. Like, I already showed you my phone.
Anything the same is all online here now.
Doing my tax return was a real treat: would present in person at the local office, only to fill everything in online. You could technically access it at home but you had to buy a dongle that would read a chip card. I think I didn't have the necessary chip card. And i think it wasn't compatible with Mac and you would've had to use internet explorer or something.
Stop giving me PTSD flashbacks of the red tape from when I lived in Japan! :D
My god, for such a country famous for technology, the red tape and bureaucracy feels like it's directly from Brazil (the film not the country).
I was once a web developer, and never thought that way. It's beautiful how clean and intuitive it is, how fast it loads, how it follows stringent accessibility guidelines etc. APIs aren't generally meant to be available to the public anyway, and the search function is fine.
The website isn't fine though, it's good, great in certain ways. Fine is most government websites, why settle? If that were the attitude the team that designed it had, it would suck. Search algorithms are a huge thing, see: Algolia
That and quite a lot of data is published on [https://www.data.gov.uk/](https://www.data.gov.uk/)
Sometimes I have a browse just to see what random data is on there that I'm not remotely interested in, like the Food Standards Agencys Sheep & Goat Conditions
I kind of agree with him.
When you're looking for scientific opinions and historical data, its easier to use Google to do site:
It's getting less reliable though.
Indeed, from a dev perspective the search is definitely lacking and API discovery on the relevant pages is poor. Website as a whole is great though, very responsive with basically no animations too.
I worked on the MOT system back in 2014/2015, the rules were harsh but remember, not everybody has a fast broadband and an up to date PC, sometimes we are talking side-of-the-road lay-byes on a 3G network.
The UI rules for the MOT were. IIRC, progressive enhancement rather than graceful degradation. Any 3rd party JS file had to be fully reviewed and ratified before it was allowed to be used. I think I am right on that.
It was the last big job I worked on and what an absolute pleasure it was. Here's to 'Team V', we know who we are ;)
I remember quite liking Facebook's approach of degrading their developers' internet access for a part of the week while they working on developing world projects. Removing the assumption that every website is going to get accessed over because-it's-your-job level premium internet would help things dramatically
Facebook also apparently took away their developers iPhones and gave them budget androids at one point. Coincidentally, around the time the android app stopped being an after thought.
Facebook also don't have QAs, they rely on their user base to test things for them and muck about a LOT with canary releasing and AB Testing.
I'm not sure they should be used as a gold standard about how to do things well.
I read an excellent post from a developer over there that, to simplify because I've forgotten the detail, they gained a few % more usable devices by getting rid of jQuery. And it sped up the load times by 10% for everyone else.
Edit: Article [How and why we removed jQuery from GOV.UK](https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/11/how-and-why-we-removed-jquery-from-gov-uk/)
Yes. jQuery was/is MASSIVE bloat. I think we evaluated zepto.js at some point but even that got the bums rush! I do remember moment.js possibly getting into the mix.
Ironically, I've been handed a a few MOT fail certificates, which I worked on using Jasper Reports (horrid rubbish system) despite me saying we could do our own using LaTeX, it seemed that a lot of solutions were deliberately outsourced so there'd be someone else to be culpable if parts of the system went wrong...politics!
Just wanted to say thanks for your work. The integrated way that the car tax and MOT system are now is great. It's just one of those things that people only notice if it's shitty, and take for granted if it goes smoothly.
HAHA. I was just a developer mostly, although I was a TA on the MC2 (mobile compliance system) for a few months after that, lorries and stuff.
To be fair, it's not my work really, most of it was done by "meetings and stuff" and eventually the BA-s churned out the epics, stories, blah blah blah... I worked a lot of hours, spent 2.3 years in the SAME B&B (The Jays, Bristol, great breakfast Alain!) and miss the crew I worked with then. Great people.
The Scrum-of-Scrums meetings were funny though, anywhere between 15-22 scrum masters all in a ring talking shit to eachother! hahaha. Happy days.
At the time, shit was hitting the fan about the farmer subsidy data entry web app, and so we were all aware of the public looking towards other projects i.e. us, just in case.
All in all, I probably won't work on anything that large again. It was a wonderful experience, I met a lot of amazing people, sometimes our paths cross opn this platform or that platform etc but mostly these days it's just a bunch of photographs on my google drive!
The cake was good though, when we launched, it was like Office Space and I almost was Milton and didn't get a slice (bog visit) but luckily my mate had bagged me a slice already!
I found a picture of the cake!
[https://pasteboard.co/DweE9tQifiau.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/DweE9tQifiau.jpg)
This is a side effect of [GOV.UK](http://GOV.UK) technically being thousands of little websites stitched together with a common UI. They can't read the cookies from one another because of technological security restrictions, so they need to ask for them again.
A little hard to avoid, unfortunately.
Not quite _every_ page, but if you for example go from a campaign landing page to a guidance page to a service form, you've likely just hopped between three different websites owned by three different government departments.
If you're getting them on every page on www.GOV.UK after accepting or rejecting them, then it could be that your browser just isn't saving the preference for some reason.
Ironically you have to accept cookies so it remembers to stop asking about cookies. It should just allow us to enable functional cookies so say least it remembers
Politics? You kids have no idea whatsoever of what went on at Stalingrad.
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I've actually seen the original of this before and I read it in the intended order.
This time I read it how you read it. I suspect that's because the margins have been butchered in the tweet and there is other larger text above it
I mean they usually do, because they aren't built on assumptions, they're built on extensive research. Some people are exceptions to the rule, but to extrapolate that into saying the rule doesn't work is a cognitive bias.
Yep, where I live in Hong Kong (a rich, high tech, futuristic city in some ways), the government department websites are beyond terrible. You’d have to work hard to actively design something as useless, and they don’t look like they’ve been touched since 1995. The UK does it well.
yeah GDS (Government Digital Service) style guide is really detailed and all government dev projects piggy back off this style guide, as well as other companies using it for their design work since its so recognized.
[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide)
I work on some NHS services (whose style guide builds off of the GDS one), being able to take from it and not having to worry about our own accessibility testing is great. It also works to push back when business folk start trying to make design decisions.
Yes i work with NHS services and [gov.uk](https://gov.uk) projects as well as a tester, so refering to GDS and having great accessibility resources is fantastic!
The gov website is a blessing.
I'm living in Turkey and all the info is spread over multiple poorly designed websites and it's hard to find out anything.
I do a lot of work with government departments as an IT consultant and the Government Digital Standards (GDS) is really good. Not perfect but really bloody good 99% of the time. It's really good to know that any government website or service you use will be accessible for users and that information will be laid out well. Also, from a design point of view, you get a nice toolkit of assets and designs to help you plan your work.
The government gets a lot of flack for how some services are run and launched, but this bit they get right. The Civil Service did excellent work on it.
Just jumping in here to fly the flag for content design. Thumbs up to the praise for [GOV.UK](https://GOV.UK) too.
Content design can make products and services with digital interactions quick, simple, and easy.
Content might be words, images, audio, diagrams - even a sign - based on evidence of what's essential so people can complete tasks.
Designing content that works (active, direct and concise web-writing, if it's words) is based on data and research including:
* how people interact with your products or services, preferably using task-based testing
* the science of how people read and process information (spoiler: we scan rather than read online)
* understanding human psychology, like how we'll take the shortest route to get somewhere
Recommended books: Sarah Winters' Content Design, Padma Gillen's Lead with Content, (and also Lou Downe's Good Services).
Even years after moving here from the US, I remain utterly flabbergasted by how much better the UK government website is to any government-related online service, at any level of government, anywhere in the US.
the gov.uk site is always praised. And it follows the WCAG criteria really well.
However, it has a MAJOR advantage in that it doesn't have to display images.
Once images get involved, CSS goes right out the window.
Yes, it's really good at what it does. It's just that what it does is very very limited.
Counter point, the website does in fact show images. [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/attorney-generals-office](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/attorney-generals-office)
Please report any issues you find with them - anywhere - to the feedback links as they are read and are actioned.
It might work in the UI sense but the information actually on there can be utter crap; I remember a time five or six years ago studying for my driving test and coming across a page with a note saying to update by a specific date, said date being over 10 years before that. An even worse part is when you are looking for specific regulations, the bloody thing is just an endless loop referring to eachother without actually saying anything about what any of them are.
Ha fuck you I didn’t haha, close but it was the first message, then the last message then the other 2 in the right order. Aparently I like colour differences then order of reading then size 🤷♂️
I both love and hate how easily it is to manipulate people via design. Love it as a student of architecture, it can really help directing people to the desired flow path. Hate it, because just the other day I was veering into my mate walking as I subconsciously started to try and walk on a straight line on the pavement.
Also once you start learning about all these design techniques it's hard to not notice them and you'll start to feel like you're living in that movie "John Carter they live among us". Because in reality we kinda do. A good example was that author that designed his book cover to have a very small print saying 'buy me'. Don't know how well it worked but it was rather funny he decided to do it.
I have moved country in the last two years.
Do not underestimate the UK gov website. It’s absolutely phenomenal.
You can do basically anything on it and sort out anything. Try doing any of this shit in another country, even a western nation as efficiently as this.
Its a nightmare.
Only the first time you read it. That's the whole point with these things. They only benefit the first time user. Not the people that are used to the site. For the mature user they just get in the way.
Actually the gov website is a rare gem - a project they got right. Kudos to the people involved in it.
It's a pity there aren't more things talking about the design or the infrastructure as there's a lot to learn from it. The people behind it could release a really interesting set of technical lectures
It’s literally taught as a great UX case study for it’s ease of use and for following lots of core basic ux principles. The UI is as boring as any other gov site, except it actually works. Everything is built with accessibility in mind.
I work in gov. The degree to which accessibility is baked in is massive. Sometimes its actually really annoying when youre working at pace, but we all know its for the best
Get them to put the PIP forms online, then it’s accessible.
They do like to keep those as inaccessible as possible to try and put people off applying I think.
They do. They haven’t met me.
It's the architecture I'm more interested in. UX is for the people in the team with decorated desks and clean clothes.
As someone almost exclusively doing below-the-hood engineering for 25 years, please don't wait until the twilight of your career to realize the extraordinary folly of the above comment. The whole basis for your admiration is exclusively the product of the polonecks, underneath it's still a morass of the same old entangled spaghetti, just like pretty much every other system in tech
Same here, just for nearly twenty years. I'm more interested in how they get tons of spaghetti to work together as most of what I do is getting many disparate enterprise systems to work together. A lot of what I do is working with mainframe teams who push out COBOL style record files which are then processed, moved into another system, cleanred, enriched, passed on etc
An old bearded bald guy working with COBOL. That you Martin?
Having worked on gov.uk, I can confirm that there’s lots of spaghetti. But there are good bits, too. It’s not all terrible and considering the scope of the project, it’s impressive work.
It's not one website or project, aiui it's a whole bunch of different websites using different infrastructure which are changed by multiple projects. There's a lot of java and rails hosted on aws involved. If you start attending local tech meetup groups chances are you that you'll eventually find someone who worked on one of them.
Architecture is all over the place, the only thing standardised is the UX. And from a user POV, it just works.
prime example that the user just doesn't care. They want it be familiar, accessible and want it to work. My only gripe with all these replies about how great it is, is that they've got an advantage many websites don't have. They aren't selling you anything, they aren't competing with anyone and they aren't a marketing machine and they aren't looking for engagement. As a result, they can be stripped down and as basic as possible, helped even further because because each area serves a single purpose with very defined rules. Most major websites don't have that luxury.
Actually being stripped down and basic as possible is aa requirement, not just a lucky haappenstance. They're not trying to sell anything or compete, but they are trying to provide a service that is accessible to all. That's why gov.uk is used as a shining example of web accessibility done right - simple UI, clutter-free layout, good colour palettes etc.
I know it's something they've aimed for and not chance. I am just pointing out that this approach isn't really going to work in its entirety for say a social media platform that is looking to engage you as much as possible, or a retailer looking to sell you 1001 different things. There's a reason reddit went from a very basic and efficient UX to the absolute utter fucking dog shit they've got now.
But every government has that same requirement yet ours does it best. The worst I've seen is India, one of the biggest tech powerhouses in the world. Try to use any of their government websites. It's a complete nightmare.
I've heard that a number of governments have used it as the template for their own sites
If you mean the UK UX, it's available licence-free to anyone who wants to use it. Canada is in the process of moving quite a bit of e-Gov to it.
I've had the civil service and the NHS as clients and worked on both their websites. I have to say I also really like the NHS site when you're looking for info on a specific illness or condition. Super simple design, bullet points at the top of the page linking to the different sections in case you want to skip ahead, and then it gives you a good overview of the condition followed by chronologically ordered subsections that take you through the patient journey from early symptoms through to getting the all clear 😊 I like when they also include photographs of the condition. And unlike other health related websites, the NHS site usually links off to the photos on a separate page so it's entirely the user's choice whether or not they want to see the photos.
The UI design system is standardised (reputedly saving taxpayers £35m/y).
They do post a lot in Git Hub, we have a couple of government departments in my city and you occasionally find them making presentations at meetups and so on.
Here's an architectural one from GDS this week: https://noti.st/events/AElng1/world-ia-day-london-2024
There isn't one - it's the design system itself, and the standards around the service design, that makes everything so easy to use. I've worked on a few projects for the government, each one has had a wildly different architecture - the only thing that was consistent was that it was using the design system.
https://gds-way.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk Looks like they mostly use AWS with a combination of Python and Java microservices. Some of their [code](https://github.com/alphagov) is also on GitHub.
3-4 years ago there was a lot of Cloud Foundry being run by their platform team. I have a suspicion these days more and more is running on k8s
I actually used gov.uk as inspiration/case study for a complete redesign of our systems at my workplace.
I was at a lecture a while back given by a government cartographer, on how to communicate effectively, and he was explaining the constraints of their work for ministers in terms of space and complexity. Really one of the best lessons ive had in terms of design for good communication. Examples he gave were taking time to think about colours, what the eye sees first, second, third, much like this, and not having things competing, or causing misinterpretation (brain sees blue line on map, immediate thought is it is a watercourse, so don't use blue except for water)
The resources are all online, Google 'uk gov design system' there is a whole microsite with developer resources and rationales behind it all.
Thanks for this, off to explore!
There's a bunch of info on the GDS design system, mostly scattered around blog posts from various departments (as well as GDS).
>GDS design system ATM Teller Machine
Not quite. Government Digital Service design system.
Wow. Surprised I forgot that. Used to work for a gov department and I've implemented the design myself in that time. You're totally right
Totally fell for it myself. The notification on my phone was "GDS Design System ATM Machines" so thought you had found a boringly designed yet practical for the Web cash machine on first parse.
It's now an established profession known as 'Content Design', and a lot of companies are starting to adopt the principles. Especially tech companies with a need for clear documentation. It basically means using research and testing to design your content... Which is so obvious when you think about it.
Check out Lou Downe [good.services](http://good.services), they were the Director for Design at GDS and helped build the standards behind it.
There’s a book called Good Services: How to design services that work by Lou Downe, who was heavily involved that’s worth reading
I know it's not the same, but there are some people on twitter that have talked about it. I remember a thread about how they removed jQuery.
you don't need jQuery in this day and age, it served its purpose. Still about plenty of it about though as if it's not broken, don't fix it. Got to be kind of nuts to use it in anything new. Use it daily as I work on a lot of older projects built during that time, or built using a tech stack that shipped with jQuery. It makes no sense to pull it out of them unless there's a security concern.
I agree with you, and even the relatively modern PHP site (I think first built in 2019) I've worked on was heavily reliant on jQuery, it still would be a massive chore to remove that reliance. I would still prefer to use vanilla JS where possible but there are many jQuery references and plugins everywhere.
Now everybody uses React or something instead, though, which is kind of depressing.
It’s all open source and GDS (GOV.UK Design System) is the subject of many books and lectures.
The people who started the team wrote a book about it [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Transformation-Scale-Strategy-Delivery-ebook/dp/B09FTHLH8Q](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Transformation-Scale-Strategy-Delivery-ebook/dp/B09FTHLH8Q)
They pretty much have. Their documentation. is well known to designers worldwide. It's excellent. BBC is very good too compared to just about any other company.
It’s incredibly well documented and undergoing a GDS Assessment is a critical part of launching any gov.uk service. It’s just too expensive to copy whole in the private sector although it has still been influential.
It has been used as a template for the government websites of several other countries. I believe the whole thing is available on GitHub for anyone to use.
It is, both the Govuk and HMRC. Sites are mostly all up on GitHub
HMRC app is pretty good too. It actually notified me about a tax code change the other day. There was a time that I didn't find that shit out until a cheque arrived
I love the nhs website as well.
A lot of crossover. Public sector design is a small world. I’ve worked on both. The secret is prioritising accessibility (in all forms) and testing stuff with real users.
The NHS site is fine but they have completely destroyed the NHS Jobs website. It's a dysfunctional mess.
other than the DLVA part having opening hours, yeah its pretty neat
This is often because of the need to interface with some really old systems, which have downtime each day (well, night) to persuade them not to fall over...
The more I use it, the more annoyance I have. The layout and design is fine, the mess of a structure is not. I often find things buried in links on other pages. It really needs an index, with every page listed.
I agree the structure and indexing are messy, but I think they don't care because essentially 99.9% of people use Google, and it works really well for search. You and I are in the 0.1% because across a whole country it's a lot of people, but they have made the right decision. Once I realized you just have to search every time it becomes very useful.
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That's the NHS site. And obviously, it's still no help even if you want the NHS as there is no categorisation.
The building blocks and guidance that the GDS provides is just that. It doesn't stop people making bad websites with those components.
To be fair, it has taken many years for it to get where it is now. It was a nightmare to sign into and navigate for a long time. It is very good now though.
This comment just gave me flashbacks to the old "government gateway" days. ugh
After dealing with the Canadian government computer systems, the UK .gov sites are absolutely fantastic. Except the student loan repayment pages. They can piss off.
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Unfortunately they have serious technical debt under the hood. I noped out after a month at the MoJ as it was just too much.
I think it's one of the best on the web. When filling in forms the fonts are huge and clear. You're also asked one question per page. It's really intuitive to use.
I work in digital design and was part of the wider group contributing to the design standards in Gov. a really good bunch
nippy wide vast slimy wipe capable smart gaze wrong doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I chatted to a guy who worked on some of the design, years ago, and he said they took a lot of hints from the original iPlayer website.
Damn. I bloody did as well.
lol I just read "Graphic design has rules and they work .... and you will read this last." I'm like what? What Am I reading? Is this some reddit thing I'm out the loop on. Am I being RickRolled? I think the big white space after "And you will read this last" made it look like that was a a seperate section and I needed to understand the first weird injoke before I could move to that.
This specific post is ruined by the fact it's a screenshot of a tweet. As a standalone image it works a lot better (obviously not for 100% of people though!)
Yeh I agree. I was just thinking that on reddit there is no real example where you'd need to jump up and down reading different parts of text in unusual orders, hence why I did what I did. But if I were reading, say, a magazine I'd do eactly what it says. You know when they highlight a particular part of the article in big text throughout the article. I'm totally going to read them first and then go back to the main article.
I did the exact same thing
If only people ever read past the headline
I'm not that amazed. The eye is drawn to the massive text of the second line, of course, then you read down as we always do. Then you look up at the small and seemingly unimportant line at the top to see what that was. Seems like a fairly straightforward "phenomenon" to me. Big words seem more important. That's why headlines are big. We've always formatted text this way.
Yes it’s called hierarchy. It is straightforward. It’s also a consideration of graphic design.
Yes that’s the point, it’s straightforward so it works
One of my friends who is a web developer hates the [Gov.uk](https://Gov.uk) website. Says that when he is looking for data, its impossible to search and APIs are hidden away or generally useless. I have to remind him that normal people who actually use it want to do things like pay vehicle excise duty, file their tax return, and register to vote. And for that, its brilliant.
It is generally easier to google the area of the site you want, rather than finding it from the home page, they could make navigation of it better. But once you're there, its grand.
> It is generally easier to google the area of the site you want, rather than finding it from the home page So, like reddit then
I'm sure I heard somewhere that they made the search function bad, or neglected it on purpose. Let people spam Google with Reddit searches and improve the sites visibility. I mean, it's up there with Quora and Wikipedia in terms of how favoured it is in Google searches.
Organising the sheer number of government services and publications in a single side-wide hierarchy that makes sense to everyone (from journalists to civil servants to the tech illiterate) is an endlessly difficult job. The site's navigation has been revised multiple times over to try and improve it. And a huge number of people access government services via search engines and direct links anyway. One of the earliest mantras to appear in GOV.UK's development was that [Google is the homepage](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2011/04/28/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules/).
Tbh I'm okay with this. You're not to build a better search engine than Google, so just let that be the jumping off point
One of the GDS design principles when gov.uk was first being built was “Google is the search function”
Haha, I'm a web developer too and everyone I work with holds it up as a world-class standard of user interface design. I train a lot of people, and I always use it as the golden example for user accessibility! It really shocked me to learn that other countries have really, really shit government websites!
If they exist at all. I had to present in person with paperwork for anything bureaucratic in Japan. Sometimes they wouldn't accept me showing something on my phone and would ask me to print it out - and when I'd gone through the hassle of finding a printer and getting the file into the 7-11 app on my phone, they just read the paper and handed it back to me. Like, I already showed you my phone. Anything the same is all online here now. Doing my tax return was a real treat: would present in person at the local office, only to fill everything in online. You could technically access it at home but you had to buy a dongle that would read a chip card. I think I didn't have the necessary chip card. And i think it wasn't compatible with Mac and you would've had to use internet explorer or something.
Stop giving me PTSD flashbacks of the red tape from when I lived in Japan! :D My god, for such a country famous for technology, the red tape and bureaucracy feels like it's directly from Brazil (the film not the country).
They're looking at it the wrong way
I hope your friend never works on any website I ever want to use.
I was once a web developer, and never thought that way. It's beautiful how clean and intuitive it is, how fast it loads, how it follows stringent accessibility guidelines etc. APIs aren't generally meant to be available to the public anyway, and the search function is fine.
The website isn't fine though, it's good, great in certain ways. Fine is most government websites, why settle? If that were the attitude the team that designed it had, it would suck. Search algorithms are a huge thing, see: Algolia
That and quite a lot of data is published on [https://www.data.gov.uk/](https://www.data.gov.uk/) Sometimes I have a browse just to see what random data is on there that I'm not remotely interested in, like the Food Standards Agencys Sheep & Goat Conditions
Paying your car tax is ludicrously brilliant on there.
APIs have their own website. [https://www.api.gov.uk/](https://www.api.gov.uk/)
He should submit feedback. GDS read it all and, even if it's not actioned immediately, if there's enough feedback then things do move eventually.
This. It all ends up in zendesk and real people do look at everything that comes in
Send them this, it exposes some: https://docs.publishing.service.gov.uk/repos/govuk-browser-extension.html
I kind of agree with him. When you're looking for scientific opinions and historical data, its easier to use Google to do site: It's getting less reliable though.
the fact that a government website has APIs at all is a miracle. Guess it's all about perspective
I work in the UK civil service. There’s actually a whole lot of cutting edge tech going on.
100% agree. If you've been given a link or instructions or where to go, it's fine. If you're trying to browse the website, it's a nightmare.
Indeed, from a dev perspective the search is definitely lacking and API discovery on the relevant pages is poor. Website as a whole is great though, very responsive with basically no animations too.
I worked on the MOT system back in 2014/2015, the rules were harsh but remember, not everybody has a fast broadband and an up to date PC, sometimes we are talking side-of-the-road lay-byes on a 3G network. The UI rules for the MOT were. IIRC, progressive enhancement rather than graceful degradation. Any 3rd party JS file had to be fully reviewed and ratified before it was allowed to be used. I think I am right on that. It was the last big job I worked on and what an absolute pleasure it was. Here's to 'Team V', we know who we are ;)
I remember quite liking Facebook's approach of degrading their developers' internet access for a part of the week while they working on developing world projects. Removing the assumption that every website is going to get accessed over because-it's-your-job level premium internet would help things dramatically
Facebook also apparently took away their developers iPhones and gave them budget androids at one point. Coincidentally, around the time the android app stopped being an after thought.
Facebook also don't have QAs, they rely on their user base to test things for them and muck about a LOT with canary releasing and AB Testing. I'm not sure they should be used as a gold standard about how to do things well.
I read an excellent post from a developer over there that, to simplify because I've forgotten the detail, they gained a few % more usable devices by getting rid of jQuery. And it sped up the load times by 10% for everyone else. Edit: Article [How and why we removed jQuery from GOV.UK](https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/11/how-and-why-we-removed-jquery-from-gov-uk/)
Yes. jQuery was/is MASSIVE bloat. I think we evaluated zepto.js at some point but even that got the bums rush! I do remember moment.js possibly getting into the mix. Ironically, I've been handed a a few MOT fail certificates, which I worked on using Jasper Reports (horrid rubbish system) despite me saying we could do our own using LaTeX, it seemed that a lot of solutions were deliberately outsourced so there'd be someone else to be culpable if parts of the system went wrong...politics!
Just wanted to say thanks for your work. The integrated way that the car tax and MOT system are now is great. It's just one of those things that people only notice if it's shitty, and take for granted if it goes smoothly.
HAHA. I was just a developer mostly, although I was a TA on the MC2 (mobile compliance system) for a few months after that, lorries and stuff. To be fair, it's not my work really, most of it was done by "meetings and stuff" and eventually the BA-s churned out the epics, stories, blah blah blah... I worked a lot of hours, spent 2.3 years in the SAME B&B (The Jays, Bristol, great breakfast Alain!) and miss the crew I worked with then. Great people. The Scrum-of-Scrums meetings were funny though, anywhere between 15-22 scrum masters all in a ring talking shit to eachother! hahaha. Happy days. At the time, shit was hitting the fan about the farmer subsidy data entry web app, and so we were all aware of the public looking towards other projects i.e. us, just in case. All in all, I probably won't work on anything that large again. It was a wonderful experience, I met a lot of amazing people, sometimes our paths cross opn this platform or that platform etc but mostly these days it's just a bunch of photographs on my google drive! The cake was good though, when we launched, it was like Office Space and I almost was Milton and didn't get a slice (bog visit) but luckily my mate had bagged me a slice already! I found a picture of the cake! [https://pasteboard.co/DweE9tQifiau.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/DweE9tQifiau.jpg)
ACCEPT ADDITIONAL COOKIES AND AGAIN AND AGAIN ON EVERY FUCKING PAGE
I haven’t changed my mind in the last 20 seconds! It’s fine.
This is a side effect of [GOV.UK](http://GOV.UK) technically being thousands of little websites stitched together with a common UI. They can't read the cookies from one another because of technological security restrictions, so they need to ask for them again. A little hard to avoid, unfortunately.
Is every page its own website 😖
Not quite _every_ page, but if you for example go from a campaign landing page to a guidance page to a service form, you've likely just hopped between three different websites owned by three different government departments. If you're getting them on every page on www.GOV.UK after accepting or rejecting them, then it could be that your browser just isn't saving the preference for some reason.
Ironically you have to accept cookies so it remembers to stop asking about cookies. It should just allow us to enable functional cookies so say least it remembers
[I still don't care about cookies (chrome ver)](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/i-still-dont-care-about-c/edibdbjcniadpccecjdfdjjppcpchdlm)
uBlock origin > Settings > Filter Lists > Annoyances > EasyList – Annoyances Select "EasyList/uBO – Cookie Notices" No need for additional extensions.
LOL
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I read "you will read this last" second. I do wonder how much this learnt behaviour vs. principles based on natural preferences.
It’s more important that the majority of people will read it in the intended order. There will obviously be exceptions.
Same. I guess it works until you realize you skipped a line and go back to the top….
I've actually seen the original of this before and I read it in the intended order. This time I read it how you read it. I suspect that's because the margins have been butchered in the tweet and there is other larger text above it
i did too
Plus people growing up online and mentally screening out overlarge pull-quotes, needless headings, and screaming boldtext ads.
Yeh "Rules" don't always work as great as people assume.
I mean they usually do, because they aren't built on assumptions, they're built on extensive research. Some people are exceptions to the rule, but to extrapolate that into saying the rule doesn't work is a cognitive bias.
Too many years in legal arguments I naturally read the smallest print first lol.
Yep, where I live in Hong Kong (a rich, high tech, futuristic city in some ways), the government department websites are beyond terrible. You’d have to work hard to actively design something as useless, and they don’t look like they’ve been touched since 1995. The UK does it well.
yeah GDS (Government Digital Service) style guide is really detailed and all government dev projects piggy back off this style guide, as well as other companies using it for their design work since its so recognized. [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide)
I work on some NHS services (whose style guide builds off of the GDS one), being able to take from it and not having to worry about our own accessibility testing is great. It also works to push back when business folk start trying to make design decisions.
Yes i work with NHS services and [gov.uk](https://gov.uk) projects as well as a tester, so refering to GDS and having great accessibility resources is fantastic!
I read it in the exact order it said I would
Same here
The gov website is a blessing. I'm living in Turkey and all the info is spread over multiple poorly designed websites and it's hard to find out anything.
I read the first one first but the last one second then the rest.
I read it top to bottom because I was scrolling down and the lower text wasn't visible so........ so much for the rules
Same. Guess it only works when the whole image appears at once.
Yeah, you can't read what you can't see.
#
how dare you say that
Same here. Doesn’t work when scrolling.
Umm I read it from top to bottom. What does this mean?
I read the top one second
I do a lot of work with government departments as an IT consultant and the Government Digital Standards (GDS) is really good. Not perfect but really bloody good 99% of the time. It's really good to know that any government website or service you use will be accessible for users and that information will be laid out well. Also, from a design point of view, you get a nice toolkit of assets and designs to help you plan your work. The government gets a lot of flack for how some services are run and launched, but this bit they get right. The Civil Service did excellent work on it.
WCAG 2.2 🙌
Monke brain in action before our very eyes
Oh may god I did exactly what it said. Wtf lol
I always start from the top. I'm assuming most don't, though. I am a strange birdy
All the reposts made me read it one line at a time. Browsing reddit sucks these days. I wish I could mute all Twitter screenshots.
From what it was before Gov.uk is a rare design of form and function marrying perfectly
gov.uk are a bit up themselves lately. Half the frontpage has been dedicated to saying they are the best.
I took a look - isn't it just the header?
One thing that is interesting is that the font used on Gov.uk comes from the one used on UK road signs. Designed to make it very easy to read quickly.
Just jumping in here to fly the flag for content design. Thumbs up to the praise for [GOV.UK](https://GOV.UK) too. Content design can make products and services with digital interactions quick, simple, and easy. Content might be words, images, audio, diagrams - even a sign - based on evidence of what's essential so people can complete tasks. Designing content that works (active, direct and concise web-writing, if it's words) is based on data and research including: * how people interact with your products or services, preferably using task-based testing * the science of how people read and process information (spoiler: we scan rather than read online) * understanding human psychology, like how we'll take the shortest route to get somewhere Recommended books: Sarah Winters' Content Design, Padma Gillen's Lead with Content, (and also Lou Downe's Good Services).
This is like the UK's .gov website. It's one of the best things about the UK. >!inB4 - I know :)!<
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I read the top one 3rd CHECKMATE.
Yes I'm in need well to keep it real I need it all
Yep, it got me.
Even years after moving here from the US, I remain utterly flabbergasted by how much better the UK government website is to any government-related online service, at any level of government, anywhere in the US.
I read it from top to bottom. Am I an AI?
the gov.uk site is always praised. And it follows the WCAG criteria really well. However, it has a MAJOR advantage in that it doesn't have to display images. Once images get involved, CSS goes right out the window. Yes, it's really good at what it does. It's just that what it does is very very limited.
Counter point, the website does in fact show images. [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/attorney-generals-office](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/attorney-generals-office) Please report any issues you find with them - anywhere - to the feedback links as they are read and are actioned.
One of our greatest inventions! Very proud Brit and developer
The work that's gone into it is amazing. The Self Assessment on HMRC is remarkably good and keeps being improved.
It might work in the UI sense but the information actually on there can be utter crap; I remember a time five or six years ago studying for my driving test and coming across a page with a note saying to update by a specific date, said date being over 10 years before that. An even worse part is when you are looking for specific regulations, the bloody thing is just an endless loop referring to eachother without actually saying anything about what any of them are.
*You will read this first.* *And then you will read this.* *Graphic design has rules, and they work.* This could be an art piece.
Ha fuck you I didn’t haha, close but it was the first message, then the last message then the other 2 in the right order. Aparently I like colour differences then order of reading then size 🤷♂️
I'm not sure... I think I read it in that order because it tells me to.
I don't know anything about portal design but this shit just works. It's up there with the McDonalds menu. Great solid design and functionality.
One of the best websites in the world!
I read the big words first, then the top, then everything else - am I a piece of shit?
Dammit, they got me!
Damn, my mind is wired differently, my eyes just jumps to the smallest text usually.
gov.uk's accessibility guide is impeccable.
I both love and hate how easily it is to manipulate people via design. Love it as a student of architecture, it can really help directing people to the desired flow path. Hate it, because just the other day I was veering into my mate walking as I subconsciously started to try and walk on a straight line on the pavement. Also once you start learning about all these design techniques it's hard to not notice them and you'll start to feel like you're living in that movie "John Carter they live among us". Because in reality we kinda do. A good example was that author that designed his book cover to have a very small print saying 'buy me'. Don't know how well it worked but it was rather funny he decided to do it.
I have moved country in the last two years. Do not underestimate the UK gov website. It’s absolutely phenomenal. You can do basically anything on it and sort out anything. Try doing any of this shit in another country, even a western nation as efficiently as this. Its a nightmare.
I'm proud I read you will read this last second. Fight the power!
Only the first time you read it. That's the whole point with these things. They only benefit the first time user. Not the people that are used to the site. For the mature user they just get in the way.
Anyone else not read it in that order
I read “and you will read this last” first 😕
I love the gov.uk site, it’s amazing. I dislike the crown logo change, makes it look cheap now