Background

The Company Accounts and Tax Online (CATO) project set out to digitise and simplify Corporation Tax filing for small businesses known as 'micro-entities' who met a defined set of eligibility criteria. These criteria included factors such as turnover and number of employees.

The project was a joint project with Companies House – allowing users to file their accounts and Corporation Tax Return to both HMRC and Companies House in a single filing.

Objectives

Upon arrival at the client site, the project was nearing its assessment to allow the service to enter private beta.

Our main objectives were to:

• · Review all content across the service against the GDS style guide and design principles
• · Iteratively improve service content through user testing
• · Incrementally introduce help text to support fields that identified as difficult with users
• · Review, edit and test micro-content including field labels, error messages and validation prompts
• · Work with UX designer on content for prototype journeys for forthcoming user journeys

Outcomes

During the contract, we carried out the following work:

• · Worked across 14 fortnightly sprints to incrementally improve service content
• · Helped the product successfully pass its assessment into private beta
• · Introduced new content workflow, allowing content to be pushed to github by content designer
• · Introduced content design into wider team processes – bringing content and UX onto the scrum board
• · Supported business analyst in extra workload in writing user stories
• · Built up relationship between contract designers across London and Newcastle sites