Northgate Civic Platform

The constraint

Residents arrived with a need, but the old site answered with departments. Finding rental support, a permit, or a missed collection meant translating a life event into the council’s internal language.

Working with Northgate Digital — a public-sector digital company — we re-organised more than 240 services around plain-language tasks. Search and navigation share one taxonomy, so the experience stays predictable whether a visitor types, browses, or follows a link from a letter.

The useful interface was not the one with the most answers. It was the one that made the next step unmistakable.

A system for urgent moments

The visual system lowers cognitive load with stable page anatomy, clear status language, and generous touch targets. High-priority services expose eligibility and response times before asking for personal information.

What changed

• Task completion is possible without knowing a department name.
• Every form preserves progress and explains why information is requested.
• Content editors preview service states before publishing.
• Automated journeys cover keyboard, screen-reader, and narrow-screen use.

Built to be tested

The design system shipped with a Playwright test suite covering the journeys residents rely on most, so the platform could be verified on every release rather than inspected once before launch.

Outcome

In moderated testing, residents found the correct service faster and with fewer backtracks. The shared content model also gave Northgate’s public-sector clients one source of truth for service hours, eligibility, and disruptions — and the platform has since been reused across three neighbouring authorities.