Designing things well

Peter Day’s podcast is another cracker this week. Admittedly he mainly interviews people I know so I might be a bit biased but the underlying message is an important one — the way you design things matters. Ben and the team at GOV.UK get a deservedly big shout out for their win at the Design of the Year awards.

We put quite a lot of design thinking into BGV. We started with a clear idea about who our users were (very talented small teams of committed people coming out of hack weekends or similar), we analysed their needs (a small amount of finance, connections to expertise and a supportive community) and then we built a prototype (in 2010 in Bethnal Green) and iterated it.

It’s strange to think that so many schemes for startups aren’t designed that way.
Related articles