Rural grants and payments to help the farming industry

Overview

The Rural Payments service is an online registration system for farmers, animal keepers, rural traders and businesses. They use this service to register their details, see and update digital maps of their land and make online applications for rural grants and payments.

User research

User research was a big part of this project. We were able to gather valuable insights that improved both design and our approach.

We observed farmers in the office and on their farms interacting with prototypes we designed and developed. We were able to watch and learn from them interacting with the service.

Researchers helped us learn about our users and helped make sure our design patterns and page flow worked well for our users. Research conducted also included people with disabilities and non-tech savvy people.

It was a valuable insight watching non-tech savvy people interacting with our prototypes. It was also interesting to see how rural locations can have damaging effects on internet connections.

A solid foundation

Government Digital Services (GDS) had created a design system to ensure design consistency across all Government services. Their design system was a solid foundation to build upon, including typography, colour palettes, grid and form-based patterns.

Unfortunately, their system did not include patterns that were essential for our service and user needs. We had to design and build our own.

Our own design system

We designed components to include pagination, tabs, collapsible’s and alerts. We put usability at the forefront of every design decision. In addition to this, we made sure everything was fully accessible and compliant.

We also spent a considerable amount of time working with GDS to design and develop new patterns. It was a valuable exercise to ensure anything we designed and built was good enough for GDS service standards.

Government departments were referencing our design system as a resource for patterns not yet developed by GDS.