Designing a national digital weather service

Context

The Met Office produces weather and climate information relied on by the public, government, aviation, energy and emergency services. Its digital products are, for most people, the whole of the organisation they ever meet.

The programme

Five years of continuous transformation: a redesigned consumer website, an app serving millions of people, a highly accessible component-based digital design language shared across platforms, development roadmaps, and an ongoing programme of continuous improvement.

What changed in how the work was done

The engagement moved beyond a one-off redesign. Multidisciplinary UX and product squads worked continuously through research, experimentation and iterative delivery, so improvement became a standing capability rather than a project with an end date.

My role

Project Director and senior experience and design leader. I directed the programme rather than designing every interface: framing the work, connecting research, UX, design, accessibility, product, technology and data, and holding the strategic thread across five years of changing teams and priorities.

What we did

• Directed research and UX across web and app in parallel
• Built an accessible, component-based design language used across platforms
• Set development roadmaps against user need and organisational capacity
• Established squads, rituals and measurement for continuous improvement
• Made accessibility a structural property of the system, not a late audit

Results and evidence

New users up 41.48%, website sessions up 33.66% and page views up 26.71%. These were the outcome of a large multidisciplinary programme; my contribution was direction, framing and continuity rather than sole authorship.

Lessons and continuing questions

The durable outcome of a five-year programme is rarely the launch. It is whether the organisation can still improve the thing eighteen months after everyone has gone home.