A little over a year since my first contract at the Government Digital Service, I returned as a product manager

The GDS project of moving departments and agencies to GOV.UK was well underway. I joined the new ‘search and browse’ team and set about making sense of all the new content that was coming on board.

There was a lot to get our heads around. Most GOV.UK users couldn’t care less what department does what, as long the thing gets done. But some rely on department knowledge to find their way around the site. We spent a lot of time designing and testing features that worked for both sets of users.

GOV.UK groups content in many different ways and uses a lot similar looking page templates. We worked hard to simplify this, making it easier to get from one end of the site to the other.

All product teams at GDS feature many different disciplines. The search and browse team included developers, a designer, and search and taxonomy specialists. We weren’t particularly reliant on other teams to get things done and so were able to make rapid changes. It’s a great model for web development that’s now becoming adopted across government.