Single Online Home. Scaling User-Centred Content Across UK Police Forces
Image credit: Met Police
The Challenge
Following the successful development of the core Single Online Home (SOH) platform, the focus shifted to ensuring its ongoing refinement and adaptation across 43 UK police forces. While the rollout of each local site was essential, the real challenge lay in maintaining consistency, accessibility, and responsiveness as new legal changes and services were integrated. My team played a vital supporting role, embedded within the client team, ensuring that updates were clearly communicated and usable for a broad public audience. We also championed a continuous improvement approach, ensuring the core platform’s content and user experience evolved in response to emerging needs throughout the rollout.
The Obstacles
Balancing National and Local Needs: Each force had unique priorities, but updates to the core platform had to be implemented consistently across all 43 domains.
Iterative Improvement: As more forces came online, the content and user journeys had to evolve—without compromising user experience or platform cohesion.
Accessibility Standards: With such a diverse audience, accessibility was essential to ensure the platform worked for everyone, including people with disabilities.
User-First Insight and Iteration: While the client team managed force-wide coordination, we focused on research and testing with users. Continuous feedback shaped clear, inclusive content and journeys, ensuring consistency and usability across all sites.
The Approach
As an embedded partner to the client’s core team, we supported the delivery of the national SOH platform by contributing content strategy, user experience design, accessibility consultancy, and research expertise. Our focus was on helping the client realise their strategic objectives by bringing scalable, user-centred thinking to every update and rollout.
Supporting Content Strategy: We helped shape content updates and supported the integration of legal and service changes into the platform. Working alongside the client team, we ensured content remained clear, accessible, and aligned with user needs.
Contributing to User Journeys: Our service designers and researchers helped shape evidence-based, accessible user journeys for vital front-line services, ensuring people could quickly and confidently access support when they needed it most.
Accelerating Site Rollout: We supported the rollout of local forces’ sites by providing clear, structured content aligned to platform standards. This reduced bottlenecks, freed up client teams to focus on other priorities, and ensured a consistent, accessible experience; helping sites go live faster.
Feedback and Iteration: We helped the client set up feedback loops with individual forces, drawing on analytics, surveys, and user testing to continuously improve content and usability.
Accessibility Assurance: Our accessibility consultant worked hand-in-hand with the client’s development and design teams to ensure all updates and new journeys met WCAG 2.2 standards, with an emphasis on inclusive design throughout.
Our Contribution
This work was made possible by the deep collaboration between our team and the client’s internal content team. Our role was to provide specialist support and capacity in a fast-moving, high-impact programme of work.
Service and Content Designers: Worked in partnership with the client’s content team to simplify complex topics and legal language into plain, accessible English.
User Researchers: Helped plan and carry out discovery and usability testing, providing insight into real user needs to support evidence-based improvements.
Accessibility Consultant: Embedded accessibility best practice throughout, from audits to developer support, helping the wider team meet and exceed compliance.
UX Designers: Contributed to the evolution of task-based user journeys that worked across multiple forces and use cases.
The Outcome
Consistent, Scalable Updates: The platform evolved to support localised service delivery while staying aligned to a consistent national experience.
Higher Engagement and Satisfaction: Improved journeys and tailored content increased citizen engagement and usability.
Streamlined Rollout: Forces were supported in launching and maintaining their sites more efficiently, with reduced duplication and faster time to live.
Increased Efficiency for Police Forces: The rollout of SOH allowed police forces to reduce administrative burdens and streamline their digital services. Citizens could quickly access the information they needed, freeing up police resources for more critical tasks.
Sustained Excellence in Accessibility: Every police force site met or exceeded accessibility requirements, ensuring that all citizens could easily access services.
Conclusion
By collaborating closely with the client’s core team, we helped scale and evolve a mission-critical national platform. My team's embedded expertise played a key role in enabling the smooth rollout of SOH to 43 police forces and over 42 million citizens. This was a genuine team effort, combining content, UX, accessibility, and research to support a platform now recognised by government as a digital exemplar. I’m proud to have played a key part in its success.
