How content designers can be part of the policy-making process

A policy is useless if no one can understand or implement it. 

Policy making and design are often treated as separate things, worked on by separate teams, with separate priorities and methods. But the success of a policy can depend on how well it is communicated and understood. 

Bringing a content designer into the policy-making process early helps to bridge the gap between intent and delivery, leading to better outcomes for government and for users. 

Here are some of the ways that content designers can help in a policy context.

Embracing and explaining complexity

When policy teams are deep in the details, content designers can provide a necessary outside perspective helping to achieve: 

• Clarity - testing if the logic works. If we can’t explain a policy clearly to a member of the public or a stakeholder, there is likely a gap in logic. Making the policy simpler early on means communication falls into place, rather than acting as a sticking plaster for something difficult to understand

• Coherence - looking at the whole policy or service to spot contradictions or duplications that can easily be missed when working in silos, or across a large, complex programme of work

Adding scaffolding and structure

Content designers can bring structure to the way we talk about policy, making it easier to design it, explain it and iterate it over time.

We might: 

• identify the ‘nouns and verbs’ - the entities and actions involved in your policy 

• do content modelling to map out how the entities and actions relate to each other 

• map the journey a user takes through your policy guidance or service, and what information they need at each point

• do a content audit to get a birds-eye view of what information users have to read, and whether it's helping or hindering how policy outcomes are being met 

Establishing consistency early

Naming things is hard. The name of a policy, scheme or service can make or break whether people understand what it is. Getting the name right is a key activity that a content designer can support in a structured way - read more about how content designers can help name services in complex situations.

If a policy team is struggling to agree on a name, it can indicate a disagreement about the scope of the work itself. Discussing the name helps tease out those points of conflict.

As well as the name, creating style guides and defining key terms is a valuable early activity. Taking the time early on to identify and define different levels of compliance (like the ‘musts’, ‘shoulds’, and ‘coulds’) minimises user confusion and avoids legal headaches later.

Thinking through writing 

Writing things down is an effective way to stress test a policy, including its underlying assumptions and logic. Writing IS thinking. And writing IS designing.

Writing a few sentences can be the quickest prototype available. Showing something  - even just a draft sentence - gets people to imagine the policy in practice, identify areas where more work is needed, and commit to a direction.

Opening cans of worms

The process of defining and organising information often surfaces misunderstandings or contradictions. Content designers are great at asking ‘what does this mean?’ and ‘what if a user does X?’. We’ll ask the stupid questions to expose things that nobody otherwise would’ve thought about. 

Forcing commitment

Deciding what to write forces a decision. If a policy point is too vague to be documented, it’s a good trigger point to go back a step and work out the details. 

Content designers can help track these points by clearly marking gaps in guidance and keeping a log of areas to come back to later.

Or, if there isn’t the luxury of time, getting a decision-maker to commit to a choice in guidance and sharing it for stakeholder approval can be a clear way of moving forward quickly.

Advocating for the user

Of course policy makers are not devoid of empathy, and talk to users regularly through consultations, engagement events and other comms. But a person cannot work on a policy while also having an unbiased view of what a user needs. That’s marking their own homework.

With this in mind, Ministers may want a particular policy outcome, but they’re not always going to arrive at the right solutions. 

That's where design comes in. Along with other design roles, content designers can help balance government requirements with what users actually need, which gives a much better chance of meeting that original policy intent. 

Thinking about the end result from the start

By working together from the start, content design can help create something usable, accessible, and realistic. It makes policy teams aware of the constraints and principles that guide the formats the policy ends up being presented in, avoiding re-work later.

Policy often results in assets like detailed guidance, consultation documents, or digital services. We’ll consider how people will find these assets and what information they need to contain.

This will also help avoid locking in bad design decisions or wasting time imagining a solution that isn’t technically possible. For example, to publish on GOV.UK, you need to know the functionality that Whitehall Publisher offers and the content standards you need to meet.

Maintaining the policy estate

Policy information needs maintenance. A messy, inaccurate content estate discredits the work and confuses users. Any out-of-date information can make users do the wrong thing. A broken link can stop them from knowing about a policy at all.

As content designers, we can keep track of how content is performing. This includes checking analytics and user feedback and letting policy teams know if something isn’t working so they can fix it. Also, making sure information is updated as legislation or circumstances change.

Telling the policy story

Content designers can help balance government requirements with what users actually need, which gives a much better chance of meeting that policy intent. 

They are generally great at documentation and telling the story of the work. This is where it’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day detail, and forget that those outside the team don’t know what’s going on inside it. 

Content design in the policy-making process helps shape the narrative and bring consistency and clarity to how work is captured, understood and communicated. By approaching this as we would approach a piece of guidance, we can make sure people across a range of responsibilities and seniority have the context they need, the right level of detail for their roles, and know what they need to do. 

If you'd like to learn more about how our content design team can support with policy making, get in touch.