Aoise Keogan-Nooshabadi

We helped NHS Digital understand the state of the urgent and emergency services within the health system and find opportunities for digital to improve patient experience and service performance.

Over six months, we spoke to over 120 people via a mix of in-depth interviews, on-the-spot interviews in hospitals, GP surgeries and workshops.

We uncovered insights about the emotional care and agency patients require beyond their clinical needs, as well as how gaps in service delivery and efficiency impact on emotional, psychological needs in ways that ultimately affect overall service performance.

These insights informed rich user personas, user needs and a proposed map of what a more intuitive, user-friendly service system could look like.




Interrobang colleagues led the research on NHS Digital’s project to understand the state of the urgent and emergency services within the health system.

Now Foster, a social enterprise start-up aiming to provide a community-centric alternative to expensive adoption agencies, wanted to boost their numbers of interested foster carers by broadening the appeal of fostering to a wider profile of people.

With this in mind, we designed and built for them a website and digital “onboarding journey” for new foster carers to explore their options and register interest.

This work was strongly hypothesis-led, as colleagues had worked on similar projects before for Buckinghamshire Council, on both adoption and fostering. We quickly discovered transferable knowledge, such as:

- prospective foster carers thinking the criteria was more stringent than it actually was: only “angels” are accepted
- more people are eligible for fostering than they think
- making it possible to book an initial conversation online substantially boosted interest and, eventually, full applications

We helped them research, design and build a new onboarding experience for prospective foster carers, addressing common misconceptions and appealing to a much broader range of people.

A big part of this experience was a new website and case management tool, which we built using modern web technologies and [released as open source](https://github.com/interrobang-uk/nowfoster).

The work was strongly hypothesis-led, inspired by earlier work we’d done on adoption in Buckinghamshire.

Now Foster are currently running a pilot in Newham, East London and a second phase is anticipated.


We built a new website and digital “onboarding" journey for Now Foster to boost their numbers of interested foster carers. 

Chloe Coleman

We helped Torfaen County Council make their digital inclusion services in the Gwent area more effective. We did this by focusing on underserved groups of people who didn’t think these services were for them.

We started by running assumption mapping and expectation-setting sessions with our stakeholders, and wrote hypotheses based on our previous work.

Our research plan was deliberately written to prove (and disprove) those hypotheses as quickly as possible, so we could focus on the most pressing gaps in our knowledge.

There was a strong place-based component to our work. Because digitally excluded groups rely on physical touchpoints, we made geographic maps of access points like libraries, compiling KPIs for each one as well as visiting several in person.

We made user personas that reflected the deep place-based differences in behaviour and attitudes across the region. This way, Torfaen can make informed decisions about the service offering.


We helped Torfaen Council, and other authorities across Gwent assess their digital inclusion services and establish what needed to happen next. 


We provided research, systemic design and evaluative support to the GLA’s Cultural and Community Spaces at Risk team, who protect the city’s community infrastructure.

We ran culturally-informed ethnographic research with community organisers, local authority planning officers and funders.

We identified the most important needs in each group and helped the GLA reorganise their website and services around those immediate needs, such as dealing with rent hikes or eviction.

We also made wider recommendations for how the GLA could conduct the work in a more joined-up way, including helping them establish a _community of practice_ for residents, landlords, local authority officers and funders to work on the issue together for the first time.


We collaborated with the CCSaR to research, design, and implement a theory of change that strengthened their services and revamped their website.

Jaye H

We helped DWP make Universal Credit work better for self-employed people.
Self-employed claimants were frequently making mistakes in their monthly journal reports, especially on expenses, leading to sanctions and delays in getting their money.

We used a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods: usability testing the end-to-end service, shadowed in-person meetings between work coaches and claimants, and reviewed the content of web pages along the user journey. We collated these findings alongside web analytics data.

We rapidly prototyped new, accessible and inclusive content over three iterative cycles, improving after each round of testing.

We proved statistically that users were making fewer mistakes, saving DWP money and meaning more people got an accurate UC payment on time and without penalty.


We helped DWP make Universal Credit work better for self-employed people through pop-up research and better content design.

Working with Universal Credit, we were given the challenge of designing a service for users who could not open a bank account, alongside creating the communication strategy, translating and iterating the branding into a physical medium, and disseminating materials to those in need through the best possible means.

One of the most common reasons why a person could not open a bank account was having no ‘fixed address’, which in practice often translates to users who are experiencing homelessness.

We ran qualitative, semi-structured interviews with homelessness charities, people who had formerly been experiencing homelessness, and people currently living with no fixed address. 

These interviews formed a foundation of our work informing the design of a user-centric service that not only met the functional requirements but also took into account the specific circumstances and limitations faced by individuals without a fixed address. We incorporated their feedback, suggestions, and lived experiences to ensure that the service was accessible, intuitive, and met their specific needs.

Throughout the project, we embraced an iterative approach, continuously refining and adapting our solutions based on user feedback and emerging insights. By adopting this iterative process, we ensured that the service and communication strategy were responsive to the evolving needs of the target audience, allowing for ongoing improvement and optimization.

By combining qualitative research, collaborative engagement with stakeholders, and an iterative design approach, we were able to create a tailored service and communication strategy that directly addressed the challenges faced by individuals without a fixed address. Our commitment to understanding the unique circumstances and perspectives of this vulnerable group allowed us to deliver a solution that was empathetic, effective, and responsive to their needs.




We were given the challenge of designing a way of recieving your benefits when you do not have, and could not have, a bank account


Working from the NHS building in Elephant and Castle, we rapidly came up with the now-familiar proposition of privacy-preserving, Bluetooth-based contact tracing. We proved the concept with a field test of a prototype app on the London Underground.

Our early user research found that people were willing to click “agree” on anything the app asked, on the grounds that they trust the NHS. The ethical issues of balancing individual privacy with community benefit were clear to us. We advocated for bringing in experts on trust, data and privacy to advise the project, and despite the incredible time pressures, we were able to do so.

Government services are usually fairly static and unchanging, so we invented and tested new design patterns to help users understand exactly what the app was doing, and how, in real time.

Our rapid prototyping and visual communication work meant that important stakeholders could quickly converge on a common understanding, and we presented our work to meetings of senior NHS and government figures.




In February 2020, on the eve of the pandemic, colleagues were engaged to deliver a workable product concept for what would eventually become the NHS contact tracing app.

Working with Samaritans, we overhauled their recruitment journey and help boost volunteer numbers. This used to involve getting in touch with a branch, either in person or over the phone. 

We made a digital-first journey that met modern expectations: consolidating weeks of manual back-and-forth into a single journey where prospective recruits were introduced to what it’s like being a Samaritans volunteer, reflected on whether it’s right for them, gave their personal details and booked a slot for an initial interview.

The new recruitment experience was massively successful: it single-handedly led to an explosion in interest from new volunteers, as well as 30% better retention through the process.




We helped Samaritans completely overhaul the recruitment journey for new volunteers, to boost volunteer numbers and help the Samaritans be “there for everyone”.

A small non-profit organising trans-continental cycling races needed help overhauling their digital tools.

They have a complex set of needs: payments, GPS tracking, real-time leaderboards, etc.

In a month, we delivered an MVP of both a website and bespoke CRM that handles applications from wannabe racers.


We helped map out Lost Dot's digital needs and built tools to satisfy their requirements.

Anonymous

From 2021, colleagues helped Hackney Council’s social care service recover from a devastating cyber attack. Vital case management software was taken offline, and all production data was encrypted and held for ransom.

Hackney was using old legacy technology, and restoring it was a years-long process. So, we worked to decrypt the lost data at the same time as building a new suite of modern, collaborative tools for social workers.

Our approach was fast, nimble and agile, designing and building product features in days that would normally take weeks or months. We worked under incredible uncertainty in a risk-averse environment to deliver an ambitious collection of tools that improved on what came before, rather than just reproducing it.
We took inspiration from other sectors and introduced product design patterns that were novel to social care, such as the kanban board interface common to tools like Trello and Jira.

We also saw this as an opportunity to deliver bottom-up, “small c” change in the social care service itself. Our service design approach used a “trojan mouse” philosophy: often teams have their hands tied by old legacy software, so by breaking that constraint we can encourage new ways of working without the expense and inertia of a large, formal change programme.

For months, Hackney’s strategy had been purely to restore their original compromised systems, but the speed and quality of our work encouraged them to see the cyber-attack as a once-in-a-generation chance to bring real, transformative improvements to social care practice.


After a horrible cyber attack, we helped Hackney Council get back on their feet and build better tools than what they had before, rather than just getting their old stuff back.

Our work

Improving urgent and emergency care

A child-centred approach to foster care

Digital inclusion

Helping cultural and community spaces at risk

Making Universal Credit work for self-employed people

Getting Universal Credit without a fixed address

Making the coronavirus contact tracing app

Hitting volunteer recruitment targets

Making a new website and race management platform

Modern tools for social care

Get updates