Simplification
Our simplification research programme will continue the work started by the Simplification Centre, which is being re-established as a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to advocacy, innovative co-designing, and design training.
You can find out more about the Simplification Centre at:
www.simplificationcentre.org.uk
A report of the first two years of the Simplification Centre's work is available here: Simplification Centre Report (PDF -636KB)
You can find the Simplification Centre's technical papers available to download here.
Simplification research and consultancy
A multi-modal corpus
Martin Thomas worked with us to develop a multi-modal corpus with Judy Delin. The corpus has been populated so far with a small number of financial documents, and there is the potential to build this into a large enough collection for the detailed study of genres such as financial services documents, or government forms and guidance.
For a more detailed description of this work, please download A multi-modal corpus of everyday documents: project description (PDF - 80KB)
National Offender Management Service
Spoken information can be as important as written information, and many encounters between organisations and users take place face to face. Together with the information design consultancy Text Matters, we worked with the National Offender Management Service to develop structured communications tools that will help both staff and prisoners to communicate consistently. They include checklists, the SBAR tool adapted from the NHS and emergency services (it stands for Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation, and ensures that reports and requests are framed in a reliable way), and an innovative tool named Recode to help ensure conversations among staff and between prisoners and staff are effective.
Working with Text Matters, and the Race Equality Advisory Group (REAG) team within NOMS, we helped develop the Noms Equality Assessment Tool which was created by REAG to help record, manage and eliminate the risks associated with inequalities experienced by offenders in prison or on probation.
The prototype tool is an Excel file with added macros. It contains a set of forms and guidance covering all the steps from gathering evidence and setting priorities to completing an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) report.
The following paper summarizes our approach: NOMS project overview (PDF 2.9 MB)
HM Revenue & Customs
A major project for HM Revenue & Customs reviewed the information architecture of their online content about VAT, and the problems associated with parallel publishing on paper and online. We compared the order in which content is presented with the order in which it is actually needed by its users and proposed new structures to align it more effectively.
We were also involved with another key project at HMRC to diagnose the cause of errors in forms, and to determine which could be put right through clearer writing and design.
Department for Work & Pensions
We supported the Department for Work & Pensions on the language and design of letters. DWP sends around 160 million letters to customers each year, and any problems with them lead to needless phone calls, or office visits. We helped a DWP team develop clearer formats, structures and wording for letters about Job Seeker's Allowance and Pension's Credit, which following user testing are now acting as model documents for a wider change programme.