About the Work
We collaborated with Homes England to digitally transform the Help to Buy: Equity Loan program to streamline the home-buying process and promote affordable homeownership backed by the government.
Challenges
We needed a user-friendly platform that meets accessibility standards and delivered a consistent brand experience to accommodate a broad audience, including those with disabilities and assisted digital needs in line with the GOV.UK Service Standards. Technical and brand integration with Homes England’s and contracted service providers was crucial as third parties provided different parts of the service.
- On this page:
- About the work
- Challenges
- Statement of requirement
- Our approach
- Results
Statement of Requirement
- Accessibility
- Open Source & APIs
- Hosting Environment
- Coherent Brand
- Experience
- Mobile-First Pages
- Security
Our Approach
We designed the service to maintain a consistent brand across all interaction points, solidifying the Help to Buy brand and underlying the backed by Government sub-branding. Emphasising accessibility, we rigorously tested the site with personas using assistive technologies in the GDS Empathy Lab. Working closely with the internal IT team, we established the relevant secure hosting environments in Microsoft Azure. We developed the mobile-first service using open-source technologies, including an integrated data service to integrate data from third-party
systems using APIs and automated data pipelines with Homes England’s backend systems, ensuring a smooth user experience.
The Gulp Digital team were a delight to work with. Arriving in an organisation unused to agile working, their unparalleled commitment to understanding users’ needs, conducting thorough user research and to creating a user interface that not only resonated with our audience but also significantly improved user engagement were key to the project’s success.Gulp’s design ethos, deeply rooted in empathy and user advocacy and their attention/eye for detail, ensured that every aspect of the user experience was seamless and intuitive.
Will German | Chief Risk Officer at Homes England
Results
Our collaboration resulted in a highly accessible and user-friendly service, supporting potential homebuyers with valuable resources. The platform contributed to increased accessibility to affordable homeownership, reflecting a genuine commitment to all users.