AI Skills Hub: a content critique

Last week, I ran an online content crit on LinkedIn about the UK government’s AI Skills Hub website. As far as we know it was written by a machine and reportedly cost £4.1 million. 

There are some basics I'm not going into in great detail because they are so basic they shouldn’t need saying at all: 

1. No government site should go live with this many accessibility needs not met. It’s utterly shameful.
2. This site is a bunch of links to external courses.

Here are the main things we spotted during the crit.

What is it called?  

First question: what search terms will people to use to get to this website? AI skills boost? Skills hub? AI skills?

Let’s look at the Google results. 

When you search on Google, you’ll find the government fighting with itself in the search results. Again. I thought all these conversations were over at least a decade ago.

Which result are users meant to choose? The first one? All of them?

And when you get to the homepage confusion continues.

As Lauren Stranks, Senior User Experience Architect at the BBC pointed out: “Is it called Skills Boost? Or Skills Hub? It doesn’t seem sure (URL and on-page title [on the homepage] don’t match).”

Also, that box with the title ‘Find out about AI skills boost’ is, in fact, not part of the graphic. It’s actually an important link, but it’s not obvious. 

The navigation also makes no sense. I won't explain the whole, circular, pointless route around the site because it is a waste of time. 

Emma Chittenden, Taxonomy and Systems Thinking consultant, put it perfectly: “2011 called, it wants its navigation back.”

Rachel Johnston, Product UX and Knowledge Lead at Protas, also added: “there’s no information scent in the navigation. I don’t know what the hub is or what a skills boost is or how to choose one or the other.”

Who is this for?

Another mystery is who this site is for and what it offers.

“Upskilling” suggests skills need to go up. So, is this for beginners or people who already have basic AI skills?

“Workers in small and medium-sized enterprises”. So, not for managers or company owners? Not big businesses? How will people know if their company qualifies? How will people know if their company is small or medium? What makes a company an ‘enterprise’?

Miriam Vaswani, Senior Content Designer at CDL commented: “I don’t know what this site is offering me. It tells me it’s for everyone, everywhere. Then it tells me it’s for UK workers.”

Nicola O’Connor, Content and User Experience Manager at William Joseph noticed the registration journey asks about specific sectors – agriculture, construction, transport, creative industries. Which isn’t ‘everyone’.

And, Shivani Sharma, UX Writer and Content Designer based in India added: “The page also doesn’t answer some basic questions a first-time visitor is likely to have:

1. What will I actually learn?
2. How long will it take me?
3. What will I be able to do differently afterwards?
4. Why should I start right now?”

The phrasing “Including free AI upskilling programmes…’ is also not clear. What else has it got that is not a free upskilling programme? For example, will I get access to a very basic thing and then have to pay if I want more?

10 errors on 1 page

Next, we reviewed the ‘AI Skills Boost’ page to find out more information about the hub's offering.
When I worked in government, we had a rule where if there were 10 or more errors on a page, we would stop reviewing it and send it back to the author to take another look.

This page has at least 10 errors in the first 3 minutes of looking at it.

Here are just a few.

1. Centered text. What is this, 2004?

Laura Baines, Web Editor at The University of Manchester said: “Centre-justified text on the skills boost page is hard to read and not consistent with the rest of the site. No proper heading structure… H4 at the top of the page?!”

2. Larger, bold, purple text for "10 million UK workers", "free training offer" and "something here for everyone across the 14 courses."

This makes our eyes dart about. And suggests the rest of the words are not as important or useful to users.

Ruth Morris, Senior Manager, Content Design at Greater London Authority spent less than a minute on the homepage: “It’s the wild West of fonts and colours. I had no clear view of if this difficult-to-read homepage is for me or not and I find the background colours distracting and unhelpful.”

Phoebe Nightingale, Content Designer at Citizens Advice agreed: “The random big words in a different colour are very confusing! And so many CTAs and buttons, even the company logos look like things I can click on. I don’t know what to look at, or what has the highest importance in the hierarchy.”

3. ‘The’ 14 courses. As opposed to someone else’s 14 courses?

4. “We are on a mission” - are you? In space?

5. “...built by leading industry partners” - according to who?

6. “...and backed by Skills England and the Department for Science Innovation and Technology”. Has there been any research in government recently to find out if people care what departments do? Previously, citizens couldn’t care less which department was providing a service. They just wanted reassurance it was government. Is it different now? Does anyone know?

7. “Courses take anywhere from 20 minutes to a day, Oh really. What are these time estimates based on?

8. “..fit around working life,....” What if you're a full-time carer or don't see what you do as ‘working’? Or want to learn a new skill, or start a new career?

9. The video is a presentation with facts then people giving opinions. It has the worst cheesy music over the top of it. Who is this video for? It’s more of a marketing tool to justify the hub, rather than meet users' needs.

10. “14 recommended courses” I thought I read there were 14 in total? Recommended makes us think there are more that aren’t recommended.

Final thoughts

In the crit, Matt Billingsley, Content Lead at CDL, posed the basic questions that should have been asked before starting: “What is the trigger for visiting this website? What will the AI skills offered help users to do? What problem is it solving for them?”

Without clear answers to these questions, it's a confusing mess that serves no-one well. In all the work that teams across government have done and continue to do, this is one of the most embarrassing sites in years.

Based on what the site actually is (14 courses from external providers) this should be one page with links to the 14 courses. That’s it. If more courses are added, you might need to put relevant links together under a substructure.

Millions have been spent on a site that should have cost thousands. A machine-written mess when what was needed was a content designer and a morning’s work.

When will government get ego out of the way and do the actual hard work of communicating effectively?

Pay your content designers more and get your vanity out of the way.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our online crit!