A pumpkin carved to say Happy Halloween from the digital team

Happy Halloween! We hope you’re blessed with lots of treats and not too many tricks, as October comes to a close.

What we’ve been up to this week:

  • Sam joined a design huddle with the customer platform team, discussing and agreeing content as public beta draws closer – more design huddles planned

  • Sophie and Sam started work on the Habitats Regs 9A reporting job including structuring a searchable table to help easily users find and open reports on species and habitats, as well as creating and translating alt text

  • Sam and Laura have been playing around with a mini prototype to deal with the complex questions at the start of many forms, dealing with who is applying, who will be the licence holder and who is filling in the form

  • Sophie and Kim have been building HTML webpages for various reports, strategies and plans. We’ve published a number of consultations onto the website, accessibility checked content and worked with subject matter experts to produce content that meets user’s needs.

  • Shaun published revised guidance for planning authorities on considering planning applications in protected river areas. Shaun also met with the subject matter expert for a new piece of proposed guidance on minimising the visual impact of building developments.

  • Mary and Shaun continued the intranet content audit with Kim investigating why a large number of pages have no analytics available.

  • Toyah continues to work with the customer platform team – this week that’s included finalising error messages and nailing down a surprise new question that had to be added to the application form last minute.

  • Lucinda has finished testing a prototype with users of our flood messaging system. The sessions prompted some insightful conversations, and the feedback gathered will inform the shape of the next phase of design.

  • Laura and Phil continue to work on the change a bird licence form and start page. This week they have been busy working through the new prototype change form - uncovering problems and hating life - then fixing things and loving it again, and on a new start page and guidance page. They aim to have the change form, the start page, and guidance page ready in three weeks.