Government Digital Service

Launching the national GOV.UK Brexit preparedness service

Role: Service Designer
Timeline: 2019 – 2020
Industry: Government
Team: Multi-disciplinary

Brexit checker tool — Start page for the Brexit service on GOV.UK.

Overview

From 2019 to 2020, I worked within a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team to deliver the GOV.UK Brexit Checker. Developed during a period of intense public uncertainty, this high-profile digital service was designed to provide clear, actionable guidance to citizens and businesses preparing for the UK’s departure from the European Union. The service utilized a simple, responsive question-and-answer flow to generate personalized action lists for users based on their specific circumstances. The platform was rapidly built and deployed in just three weeks, achieving massive national uptake and supporting millions of users in the UK and abroad before being retired in 2021.

As a Service Designer on the team, my role was critical to structuring the logic and policy integration of the service. My responsibilities included:

Developing the backend logic for the complex question-and-answer flow.
Facilitating prioritization and content workshops with numerous government departments to map day-one legal changes.
Auditing and mapping extensive existing Brexit-related content across the broader GOV.UK platform.
Supporting user research sessions to ensure the rapid-fire interface was accessible and clear under pressure.

Problem

The primary challenge was navigating extreme policy ambiguity under a fixed, immovable deadline. Prior to launch, the government did not possess a centralized, complete list of the specific laws that would change on day one. Without this information, it was impossible to know what questions to ask users or what advice to generate. We had to extract, translate, and prioritize complex, shifting legal policy into a clear digital logic tree in real time, all within a compressed three-week window.

Photograph of a large whiteboard covered in hand-drawn logic mapping the Brexit checker decision tree, with columns for nationality, residency and travel plans, connected by arrows and sticky notes in red and blue marker. — Brexit Checker decision tree — a logic map developed with the product team to visualise complex user flows based on nationality and residency, informing how personalised content was surfaced.

GOV.UK Content Audit Map - A comprehensive map of existing Brexit content across the GOV.UK platform. This visualization allowed us to identify current information gaps and strategically signpost users directly from their personalized action lists. — GOV.UK Content Audit Map — a comprehensive view of existing Brexit content used to identify gaps and signpost users from their personalised action lists.

Result

To solve the data gap, we designed and ran a series of rapid alignment workshops with policy teams across more than 20 separate government departments and agencies. Through these sessions, we successfully extracted, co-created, and prioritized a definitive list of approximately 99 critical laws changing on day one.

We used this foundational list to build the service's logic, structure the user flow, and rapidly draft accurate guidance content. The service launched successfully on schedule, handling traffic from millions of citizens, visitors, and businesses, and serving as the primary source of truth for UK holiday and business preparedness.

GOV.UK Brexit checker actions list page titled 'What you need to do now to prepare for Brexit', showing a personalised summary of the user's answers on the left and prioritised actions such as travel insurance, mobile roaming and International Driving Permit on the right. — Brexit Checker actions list page — a personalised overview of the tasks a user needs to take based on the answers they provided.

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