User-centred design consultancy and services
User-centred design at Hippo
People are the most unpredictable part of any system. For digital services to be effective, you need to optimise and design for people. This ensures valuable products and services that achieve their desired objectives and outcomes. At Hippo, no matter what tech or data we use to deliver the solution, we approach every problem from the perspective of the user.
What is user-centred design?
User-centred design (UCD) is an iterative process that focuses on putting users at the centre of product design and development.
It involves understanding and considering user needs at every stage in the process, including planning, research, design, implementation, and measuring.
For Hippo, this means:
- We find the problems that need to be solved
- We think about users before technology
- We use empathy and don’t make assumptions
- We design and build using evidence
- We co-create and iterate relentlessly
- We’re honest, collaborative and inclusive
- Above all we’re human
Benefits of user-centred design
User-centred design ensures products and services meet user needs and that all users can use the product as intended.
Understanding users
It helps to understand users’ needs, motivations and behaviours regarding features of a product, tasks, goals, user flows, and more.
Better outcomes
By designing and developing a product from the perspective of how it will be understood and used by your users, you deliver products and services that lead to better outcomes – for users and your business.
Enhanced experience
Every touchpoint that the user or customer has with the product can be analysed, well designed and developed.
Why we’re leaders in being user-centred
At Hippo, we design and build digital services that solve problems for people. Across a broad variety of contexts, the digital services we work on are used and managed by people – from booking a doctor’s appointment, purchasing a train ticket or accessing a bank account.
User-centred design services and Hippo
Here’s some key ways we can support your organisation with user-centred design:
User-centred digital strategy
Align digital with strategy and policy
We help you align digital services and products with organisational strategy, adapt them to your business needs, and harness digital to empower public sector policy agendas or commercial goals.
Bridge the strategy gap
By building strategic alignment and clarity, we ensure your digital products have purpose, directly supporting your overarching goals or policy objectives.
Context is key
We help you deliver digital initiatives that are relevant and have impact, bringing deep understanding of public sector policy and private sector commercial challenges.
Unite teams, drive change
We help you gain buy-in from stakeholders, boost morale, and boost resources, ensuring teams are aligned with your strategic direction.
The services we excel at:
- Product and digital strategy
- UCD maturity, upskilling and coaching
- Data driven insight
- User-centred policy design
- User-centred target operating models
The benefits we deliver:
- Reduce waste and boost efficiency
- Services and products aligned with goals and market
- Enhanced team morale, trust and adoption
- Achieve market leadership and advantage
User-centred approach
Understand and design for your users
We address challenges around trust and adoption by adopting a user-centred approach. We don’t lead with tech; we work with your organisation and its users to understand specific needs and deliver value where it matters most.
Evidence-based decisions
Making service design decisions based on assumptions can set you up for failure. We help you collect high quality, evidence-based data so you’re equipped to make the right decisions for your users.
Build trust and adoption
By involving users and stakeholders needs from the outset, we help you overcome challenges with adoption and build trust by creating seamless user experiences that meet their needs.
Focus on users before tech
We look at every challenge from the perspective of the user. Unlike other partners, we don’t lead with technology, we help you design, build and transform solutions through user-centred design.
The services we excel at:
- User research
- Business analysis
- Data analytics and data science
- Co-design with users
- Ethical and inclusive design
The benefits we deliver:
- Seamless user experiences with reduced friction
- Digital services that users want to use
- Increased digital interactions and transactions
- Strengthened brand reputation and market share
Agility and iteration
Build the right thing, iterate and adapt
Hippo’s user-centred approach ensures that your strategy and services are agile and adaptable. We build iteratively, allowing for continuous incorporation of feedback, leading to services that work, and improve over time inline with changing user needs.
Efficent and effective services
Hippo’s user centred approach helps you overcome issues around digital service efficiency and effectiveness, helping you to build and transform digital products the right way.
Harness UCD to iterate and adapt
Digital solutions should never be just a one off. We help you use UCD to launch in manageable phases, capture feedback and harness insight to adapt and iterate.
Fit for future digital services
We help you adapt to changing user needs or organisational workflows, to build scalable services that are fit for future and resilient.
The services we excel at:
- Service, content and UX design
- Agile software engineering
- Product management
- Delivery management
- Usability testing
- Prototyping
The benefits we deliver:
- Deliver services at scale and pace
- Build the right thing first time
- Achieve first to market advantage
- Build scalable and future-proof services
Inclusive and accessible digital services
Build services that work for everyone
We continually ask how we can solve problems for your organisation and its users from experience perspective. We help users overcome barriers in your digital service by harnessing empathy, and applying accessible and inclusive principles.
Ensure no one is left behind
Designing and delivering digital services that are truly inclusive and accessible can be a challenge. We help you build for all, including people with disabilities, varying digital literacy, and vulnerable user groups.
Engage with your users
Accessible and inclusive design benefits everyone. We help you embed these considerations into services, better engage with your users and increase your customer or user base in the process.
Improve your maturity
We leave your organisation upskilled and empowered to do more, embed empathy into design processes and continually shape the accessibility and inclusivity of your services.
The services we excel at:
- Accessible and inclusive design
- UCD for under-represented groups
- UCD for vulnerable customers
- Accessibility reviews and assessements
The benefits we deliver:
- Build services for wider groups and increased users
- Reduce the burden on users through UCD
- Balance digitisation with the needs of the digitally excluded
- Enhance your reputation and user affinity
User-centred digital transformation
Empower digital transformation
Too often technology and digital transformation initiatives are implemented with unrealistic expectations—leading to inefficiencies, poor adoption, and friction for users. True transformation is delivered by understanding the organisations and users who will benefit from it.
Putting people first
Many technologies are surrounded by promise and expectation, yet poor implementation can create new complexities and frustrations for users. Our focus starts with people and their challenges.
Identify opportunities
Our UCD approach helps you understand pain points that directly inform new opportunities for innovation, helping you consistently drive new solutions through empathy.
Shifting mindsets
We help you activate culture shift, where user-centred principles become part of organisational values to drive creativity and innovation.
The services we excel at:
- UCD-led technology and digital leadership
- Organisational change
- Team upskilling and collaboration
- Internal capability and maturity development
The benefits we deliver:
- Validate your technology decisions and eliminate risks
- Facilitate and drive innovation
- Build digital maturity and internal capability
- Deliver change through cultural alignment
NHS login: Delivering seamless access to NHS digital services with user-centred design
“Hippo have played a fundamental part in the creation, development and continuous evolution of the NHS login service. Hippo’s strong focus and aptitude in designing for and meeting the needs of our users has enabled the NHS to deliver a single simple login for all."
Melissa Ruscoe
NHS login – Programme Head
Key statistics
- 2 million daily authentications at its peak
- 40% reduction time for verification journeys
- 80% reduction in hosting costs
Our user-centred design approach can help you:
Empathy and iteration are key principles of our delivery approach. We work to uncover your needs and challenges – and those of your staff, users, or customers.
Technology helps us solve problems and drive digital transformation. User-centered design helps us understand the problems we actually need to solve – and in turn, build the right services or platforms.
Regardless of a user’s technical skill or access to technology, digital services should be accessible for everyone. We help you build user-centred experiences underpinned by inclusivity and empathy.
When you involve users directly into the design process of your digital strategy, the outcomes will gain stronger adoption and cross organisational engagement.
User-centred digital solutions can enhance the effectiveness of organisational goals or public sector policy – adapting commitments into powerful digital products.
Find out how we can help your organisation with user-centred design.
Our user-centred approach ensures that for any digital service, understanding users’ needs enables us to design and deliver the best solution to any problem. We deliver services your users need and want to use.
