What would other government websites look if they looked like GOV.UK?
GOV.UK has long been a very user-friendly website, trailblazing the way to helping citizens get the information they need quickly and cleanly. GOV.UK replaced Directgov which was the UK Governments official website previously. It came about with the need to bring together all government websites under one standard and design.
GOV.UK Service Manual
GOV.UK publishes a Service Manual which helps other Government organisations to work better and think about things such as Accessibility and User research when designing a service. This allows other Government organisations such as Home Office, Department for Work and Pensions etc. to design services inline with the Digital service standards.
Digital Service Standard
The Digital Service Standard is a set of 18 criteria to help government create and run good digital services.
All public facing transactional services must meet the standard. It’s used by departments and the Government Digital Service to check whether a service is good enough for public use.
GOV.UK Design System
The GOV.UK design system was released in 2018 to make services consistent with GOV.UK. This system replaces GOV.UK Elements which was previously used to share components across government. It was found through research that there were a lot of inconsistencies across government websites as some organisations created their own components which started to cause poor user experience for citizens. The whole system is open source and allows other governments across the whole world understand which component to use when and how to apply different patterns.
So what would other government websites look if we made them look like GOV.UK?
It can be frustrating when you want to travel to a foreign country but can’t seem to get the information about travelling there or any other basic information such as national holidays or the website is so badly designed you just give up even going there. I’ve taken a few government websites and redesigned them to look like GOV.UK.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries, with its people crammed into a delta of rivers that empties into the Bay of Bengal. Poverty is deep and widespread, but Bangladesh has in recent years reduced population growth and improved health and education. Formerly East Pakistan, Bangladesh came into being only in 1971, when the two parts of Pakistan split after a bitter war which drew in neighbouring India.
Current website
How it would look with GOV.UK styling
Russia
Russia — the largest country on earth — emerged from a decade of post-Soviet economic and political turmoil to seek to reassert itself as a world power. Income from vast natural resources, above all oil and gas, helped Russia overcome the economic collapse of 1998, but the oil price slump of 2014 ended the long run of prosperity.
Current website
How it would look with GOV.UK styling
Pakistan
The Muslim-majority state of Pakistan was born out of the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, and has faced both domestic political upheavals and regional confrontations. Created to meet the demands of Indian Muslims for their own homeland, Pakistan was originally made up of two parts. The east wing — present-day Bangladesh — is on the Bay of Bengal bordering India and Burma. The west wing — present-day Pakistan — stretches from the Himalayas down to the Arabian Sea. The break-up of the two wings came in 1971 when the Bengali-speaking east wing seceded with help from India.
How it would look with GOV.UK styling
