The RTPI is the body that charters town planners. I joined the small ICT team to produce a staff intranet, and to help with other developments to the website, including an extra layer of security protocol. I’m trying to persuade them to use user research and wireframes to get pages worked out before the build stage.

The Family and Parenting Institute combined with the Daycare Trust to form the Family and Childcare Trust.

They asked me to compare the site analytics for all six of the websites the two charities were running, and then to do a competitor analysis. I also helped with their social media tactics.

They wanted a new, combined website and I ran some workshop sessions to help them decide what the new site would need to do and what content it should include, before writing a functional specification with them and helping them assess the proposals when the build was put out to tender.

Now the rebranded site has launched, I am back to building pages, editing copy, and refining the site’s structure and usability. I have also been giving some of the other website editors training in writing for the web – writing clear English, structuring copy so that it’s less effort for the reader, using best practice for accessibility, and following the EST’s house style. I hadn’t done website training since 2004, so this has been very enjoyable.I reckon the challenge is to make it less like an exam and more like a pub quiz – I’m working on it!

My role has been scaled down, so I’m looking for other work to supplement it.

The Energy Saving Trust is rebranding itself as a charitable foundation with a business arm. As we needed to refresh the website, I and my colleagues in the marketing team wanted to take the opportunity to improve the functionality too, which included a radical rethink of how we used the CMS’s translation mechanism. Neither the design team nor the technical agency has a UX, so I have taken on that role, writing functional specifications for the new elements, working out some of the technical integration into eZpublish, a CMS I now know very well, and doing the liaison between design and tech and the client that’s such a fundamental part of a UX’s job. I’m now working on the IA and taxonomy for the site, and planning how to do the back-end restructure.

Family Friendly is a nationwide charity scheme that brings together businesses and public services committed to making the UK a more family friendly place. Their website, WeAreFamilyFriendly.org, encourages users to comment on the service they have received. My role is to moderate comments and ask the organisations involved to give their feedback.

The site is owned by the Family and Parenting Institute, and I’m happy to be working for a charity with worthwhile aims.