Design of the Year Award 2013: digital category winner

On the ceremony at Design Museum in London that happened yesterday, the UK government website was announced as the winner. The website – Gov.uk – was designed by Government Digital Service, a team led by Ben Terret.

The intention was to gather all the existing government websites into one, making life easier for lots of users, as Deyan Sudjic, director of Design Museum said.

The director explained it: “It makes life better for millions of people coping with the everyday chores, from getting a new passport, to paying their taxes. It’s a reflection of the government understanding how to communicate with the country in a way that works, it’s simple, direct, well mannered, all the things that we would like to take for granted from the government, but in a sea of red tape and jargon, usually can’t.”

Prime Minister David Cameron mentioned about this award: “For the first time, people can find out what’s happening inside government, all in one place, and in a clear and consistent format.”

These website totally focus on user’s needs, and the team had in mind 10 principals to guide them doing this work:

1. Start with needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better