I worked as part of a multi-disciplinary team to deliver a digital service for claiming child benefit. Leading a group of less experienced designers, I promoted good practice in a rapid and complex project. I enabled collaboration across the programme. And I supported my team to develop and iterate internal processes collaboratively. This included documenting and evidencing our decisions, working in the open, and seeking feedback.
I acted as a strong design voice and promoted the value and importance of design roles. And I supported others to confidently influence and advocate for user-centred design. It was a joy to see the designers on my team grow. To better work with our team’s dynamics and fast paced delivery. And to navigate the high stakes of a complex service landscape, scrutiny from senior stakeholders, and large amount of users.
Background
Claiming child benefit has always been a paper process. People received a form at the hospital after giving birth. Or they downloaded a form to print out and fill in by hand. Or filled in their details digitally and then printed and posted this form.
This process is outdated and difficult for many people, and it does not meet accessibility standards. Barriers include needing a printer and paying for postage. The process also causes unnecessary cost and workload for HMRC. Which can lead to delays in processing claims and frustrations for staff. There has always been an ambition to remove paper from the process completely. And to allow people to submit their claims entirely digitally.
In 2022, the ‘print and post’ child benefit form was also fundamentally broken. There were technical errors and an overly complicated process for downloading and opening. It meant 97% of users could not even open this form.
My role as a design lead
A team was stood up to address this problem. I worked as the design lead in this small multidisciplinary team. It included software engineers, business analysts, user researchers, performance analysts, product and delivery managers, plus content and interaction designers.
My role was to lead and support four less experienced designers. I promoted good practice in this rapid and complex project. I improved how we documented and evidenced design decisions based on feedback. I helped unlock tricky design problems. I encouraged working in the open and seeking feedback. And I supported people’s wellbeing and learning and improved on the team. It was a joy to see the designers on my team grow. Together, we were able to better navigate our team’s and programme’s dynamics. And better coped with the fast pace of the delivery work. All in a complex service landscape with a large amount of current users. And with massive scrutiny from senior stakeholders.
I also strengthened the role of design in a tech and business driven environment. I promoted the value and importance of our roles and methods within the team and programme. This enabled better collaboration. And provided a strong design voice that helped others to more confidently influence and advocate.
It is not an easy task, but Ute has changed the team dynamic, so that design is taken more seriously, and the designers are provided more time to explore options, test with users and have a bigger input in project decisions. Her experience and knowledge of service design shows in every meeting I’ve attended with her, and her expertise has positively impacted most if not all major decisions within the project.
When working with the design team, I feel as though all three of our voices are equally important and that we are working at the same level of seniority, which we aren’t. This is because Ute allows me to represent content as an individual but is there to assist me whenever I need help. I feel much more confident as a designer after having her guidance.
Both myself and the other designer in our team go to Ute for advice daily when we need further input on a complicated issue we are facing. She has always provided either an elegant solution or ways to gain further understanding on a topic so that we can solve the issue, which allows us to learn how to problem solve more effectively in the future.
I have learned an incredible amount from Ute during our time spent working together. She has always been wonderfully supportive and has always represented the design team well within a very developer-driven environment.
Ute has always strived to lead the design team to have more of an input within a very developer-influenced team. She seems extremely comfortable representing design in senior stakeholder meetings.
By working with Ute, I’ve seen how service design is a design career route I likely will end up pursuing. By collaborating with Ute, I notice things I should be doing better or more of to improve myself as a designer. If a leader is meant to “inspire” than that is what Ute does, she makes me want to be a better designer.
The first phase
We quickly rebuilt the print and post form to work from a technical perspective, and to be more usable. This form went live immediately and helped over 200,000 people within months. Next, we rapidly iterated this first version. We improved its usability, streamlined the questions, and opened it to more users.
It was now fully accessible until people are asked to print their form. We also connected this service to analysis software. This meant HMRC could now collect data and understand how people use the form. It gave us more insight into which questions people find easy or difficult. Or where they enter information in unexpected ways causing issues to staff who work on these forms. All this allowed us to learn about our users and improve the content and questions further.
Throughout this project, we collaborated closely with HMRC’s policy and operational staff. They process child benefit claims and their expertise and experience was invaluable. They understand how claims move through various parts of the organisation. As well as through a range of digital applications. This process ensures people who claim are eligible and receive the correct benefit. Our business analysts excelled at navigating this complex landscape. And at translating it to the team in actionable ways.
As a service designer, I championed the diverse needs of people using child benefit forms. I loved learning about them through our ongoing user research and performance analysis. However, I also needed to balance these user needs with other considerations. The reality of operational and technical processes pose many constraints. Sometimes this meant figuring out a change in the digital journey such as changing content or journey steps. Sometimes it meant working through technical changes with our developers. And sometimes it was about advocating a process change to better accommodate a user need. Often it involved patience and difficult conversations. And careful consideration of our resource in relation to the value provided to different user groups.
Over time, we gained the trust of our operational colleagues. I listened to their concerns and suggestions. I took care to explain the reasoning and evidence behind every design decision. I talked people through best practice and GDS standards. And I ensured we always draw up multiple solutions to test - including their suggestions. We invited colleagues along to user research session where they saw any impact on real people. Overall, this meant less silos, a better service, and faster delivery. All thanks to a joined up digital and non-digital process.
Since joining the team Ute has been a real champion for the user, with a pragmatic slant. She balanced user needs with business reality (and business perceived reality) skilfully, compromising when necessary but holding firm when it mattered, and helped hugely with the design of the service.
It was genuinely fantastic working with a service designer who could remain so well grounded in the reality of what was possible and what mattered most. It very much improved my opinion on service design.
The impact and why it matters
We did not stop at those iterative improvements to the print and post forms. My team worked on finally allowing people to submit their claims entirely digitally. This may sound easy, but absolutely was not. The technical, operational, and design work involved was large and complicated. It often stretched beyond the control of our team in order to deliver an-end-to end service that works for users, staff, and HMRC. Nonetheless, in March 2023, our first private beta user completed the service online. They got their child benefit payment within days rather than the usual 16 weeks or more. I was immensely proud of my team and my own contribution because this is:
A big win for people. Over half a million people claim child benefit every year. This simplified a difficult process people struggled to navigate. Especially as this can be a stressful time in their lives. It removed barriers such as access to a printer and paying for postage. And most people are paid much faster.
A big win for HMRC. Digitising this service has been an ambition for over a decade. We did this in a short amount of time. It will be more efficient, reduce backlogs, and save taxpayer money every year. And it will allow HMRC to continue learning about the service and its users, and improve it further.
A big win for the benefits landscape in the UK. People typically wait weeks or months for their first payment. Often when they desperately need the money. Letting people claim digitally cuts that waiting time down to a couple of days. Not for everyone, sadly - complex cases still took longer. But the team started working to get more and more circumstances processed digitally and paid immediately.
The second phase
My team continued shepherding the service through its private beta phase. During these phases, we continued improving the content and journey flows. The insights from incoming user research and growing amounts of data helped us do this. We also continued our close collaboration with colleagues in operations. And were able to draw on the vast knowledge of operational teams when designing the service. This was priceless, and we achieved much better integration across departments this way. Together, we were able to change an outdated policy. Claims for children registered in Northern Ireland can now submit digitally. And we integrated with the Home Office to enable EEA nationals with EU settled status to submit digitally. Both made a big difference to expanding how many people and user groups can now use the improved service. And this saves taxpayer money every year and reduces backlogs for HMRC.
Throughout development, testing and Private Beta there has been a brilliant collaboration and one team ethos across digital, the business and IT Delivery Team and partners. This has supported a successful delivery at significant pace, allowing decisions to be made in real time and effective management of dependencies between digital front end and back-end delivery.
Working with yourselves has been great, especially as you are able to visit the operational areas, get their insight into how they work, and how some of our customers behave.
There has been great collaboration between the digital team and front line Operations. Both upskilling the digital teams with valuable first hand customer insight and equally upskilling the knowledge of ops colleagues.
We also failed an Alpha GDS assessment. This was a difficult one to process, especially as a design lead on the team. I took away lots of reflections on how assessments fit into the schedule of a rapid and iterative delivery. And on how they can work with our mission to release value early in order to learn and improve further. More importantly, we passed a Beta assessment with flying colours 3 weeks later. And with only a few days’ notice for each one.
Meanwhile, we managed a rapidly increasing level of scrutiny. The importance of this transformation started to land with senior stakeholders. It involved personally briefing HMRC’s CEO and deputy CEO. Finally, I challenged the process around working with teams responsible for gov.uk pages. They form an integral part of the child benefit journey, but lie outwith the team's control. I advocated for collaboration and joined-up working. And pushed hard to effect real, and rapid, change.
Ute has played a blinder. The Child Benefit landscape is huge and complex, and Ute has been a key person in helping the team navigate that landscape. Recently, she's been vital in those difficult conversations with teams who "own" the gov.uk content about Child Benefit. It's an extremely hard and frustrating job which Ute is handling brilliantly, and it's hard to overestimate how important it is in terms of helping users actually find, understand and use our service.
Overall impact
This release has been widely and roundly celebrated within HMRC. It's been called a poster child of the digital transformation the organisation is in the midst of. In May 2023, we left private beta after over 1100 people successfully claimed digitally. On entering public beta, around 1300 people were able to submit their claim digitally within a few days. And these growing numbers are the most important win to me. The service is still helping hundreds of thousands of people every year. And is realising massive efficiency benefits for HMRC.
