The public deserves services that are useful, usable and safe
Public money is regularly spent on digital projects (websites, apps and campaigns) without clear evidence of need or value. The UK government's AI Skills Hub reportedly cost £4.1 million. For that money, the public got a list of 14 links to courses that already existed.
At Content Design London, we believe that all content must be useful, usable and safe. The AI Skills Hub is none of those things. Our critique found that it:
- fails basic accessibility standards
- lacks a clear user need
- is confusing to navigate, with inconsistent messaging.
Read more about our AI Skills Hub: a content critique.
Vibes over substance
The AI Skills Hub isn’t just a bad website. It’s a (common) case study in what happens when projects are driven by vibes instead of research and evidence.
Someone, or some people, somewhere, signed off £4.1m for this outcome without asking basic questions, like:
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- Who is it for?
- Who might we risk excluding?
- What outcomes are we expecting the content to achieve?
- What might a minimum viable solution look like?
These are basic governance questions that content designers and their user-centred design colleagues ask all the time. Answers to these types of questions could have saved millions.
When design is skipped, people get excluded
When government (or any organisation) commissions services without asking basic design questions, it's more likely people will be excluded from using it.
Design is how organisations make responsible decisions about what to build, who it’s for, and how to reduce risk. Skipping these steps is unethical because these checks protect people from harm and make sure money and time is being spent responsibly.
In the case of the AI Skills Hub, a basic design process would likely have revealed that the need was simple: a single, clear, accessible page linking to existing resources. This type of clarity could have prevented unnecessary complexity, exclusion and cost.
What we're doing about it
Freedom of information request
Content Design London has submitted a freedom of information request to the UK government to understand how we ended up with the AI Skills Hub. We’re asking questions like:
- What user research was done before launch?
- How many user-centred design professionals worked on it?
- What percentage of the budget was spent on user-centred design?
- Did the hub undergo an alpha, beta or live service assessment?
- What was criteria was used to select the courses listed on the hub?
This is not to blame an individual or project, but to hold the wider procurement process to greater transparency to understand how decisions are made and approved. The public deserves to know where their money went.
At the very least government services should be:
- usable for all (inclusive and accessible),
- useful (helps them to do something they want or need), and
- safe (avoids harm or risk of harm).
That’s not too much to ask.
A petition for digital transparency reports
We’ve also submitted a petition calling for the UK parliament to make it law for all government departments and publicly funded bodies publish annual reports on new taxpayer-funded websites, apps and online campaigns.
These reports would explain why each digital project is needed, who it is for, how much it costs, whether it meets accessibility standards and what outcomes it was meant to deliver. Departments would also have to disclose projects that were delayed, cancelled or scrapped, and set out clear plans with named senior officials accountable to fix services that are not useful, usable or safe.
This transparency would give Parliament and the public a clearer view of whether spending on these digital projects offer value for money, while helping to reduce waste, exclusion and harm.
When the petition is published we will post it on our socials.