Hackney Council
Book Temporary Accommodation
With local authorities under increasing pressure to house a growing number of residents, the Benefits and Homelessness Prevention (BHP) team needed a unified, in‑house system that would allow them to efficiently and securely list, search, find, maintain, and update temporary accommodation assets.
Responsibilities
Collaborate with the engineering team to redesign the property data model for Book Temporary Accommodation. The system was originally designed for single residences, but it was extended to support hierarchical relationships (parent, child, grandparent), enabling efficient multi‑unit listing, searching, maintenance, and booking within blocks.
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Improve the search and add properties journeys so users can add multiple units in one session, clearly distinguish between different property types, and complete their tasks with greater speed and confidence. This includes refining the flow to minimise unnecessary steps and ensuring the interface supports efficient bulk entry.
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Review and analyse current feedback on the Alpha version of Book Temporary Accommodation, and use that feedback to optimise existing pages. Collaborate with business analysts, design researchers, content designers, and service designers to identify missing parts of the journey and create the necessary pages for the MVP release.
Property page (edit booking prototype)
Hackney Website
The Hackney Council website provides a one‑stop shop for residents and businesses to access and manage services online. It encourages self‑service for popular tasks such as paying council tax, managing parking fines, and requesting repairs, while still ensuring that support is available when residents need to speak to someone directly.
Responsibilities
Provide design support to enable the re‑platforming of the current website. The priority is to align common journeys undertaken by Hackney residents with tried‑and‑tested local authority journeys, design patterns, and templates provided by LocalGov Drupal, while also identifying bespoke journeys and design requirements and delivering complete solutions.
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Explore and refine the visual identity of the Hackney website. Hackney residents have a deep connection to the existing brand, so alignment with the broader brand identity and style guides — especially the use of colour, typography, and imagery — is encouraged to reinforce brand recognition.
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Refactor various design patterns, components, and pages, paying particular attention to inconsistencies across the website that cause confusion amongst users, and updating dated design patterns that prevent users from completing their tasks.