Content Design (the GOV.UK method)
Content design is the discipline Sarah Richards named while leading content at GOV.UK, later codified in her book Content Design. It decides content from user need and evidence rather than stakeholder want: establish what users actually need (from search data, support logs, research), express it as a user story or job story, and only then choose the format, a page, a table, a calculator, or nothing at all. GOV.UK’s reduction of roughly 75,000 pages to a few thousand better ones remains the canonical proof that less, evidenced content outperforms more content.
Start from evidenced user needs, then choose the format that meets them.
User need (with evidence) → Job story → Right format → Plain language
When to use this
- When publishing is driven by what stakeholders want to say rather than what users need to know.
- When the default format is always "a page of text", content design asks whether a chart, tool, or nothing would serve better.
- For service, support, and task-oriented content, where user success is measurable.