Digital

  • Designing complex content in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    10th October 2025 by

    Guest blog post by Therese Hooper, Lead Content Designer in Social Security Scotland. This blog is about the tools I used to tackle a complicated content challenge, working in a new cross-functional team facing major time constraints. The role of content design You will have heard this before. A content designer’s role is not just...

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  • Drawing is designing

    6th October 2025 by

    Guest blog post by Andy Robertson, Senior Content Designer in Social Security Scotland. In the age of shiny new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, I’m making the case for pen and paper. As a senior content designer in government, here’s how I use my drawing skills.     I love to draw Some of my strongest...

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  • Writing for wellbeing: why we created a trauma and stress writing guide

    18th June 2025 by

    Guest blog from Sarah Waterfield, Senior Content Designer at Social Security Scotland. At Social Security Scotland, we know that language matters. The words we use in our communications and webpages shape how people experience our service. Many of our clients have faced difficult life events or negative experiences with benefits. If our language is complex...

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  • Reflections on the Warm Scottish Welcome programme

    15th May 2025 by

    Blog by Robbie Fergusson, Senior Product Manager, Design, Digital and Data team (Warm Scottish Welcome programme). I worked on the Warm Scottish Welcome programme for nearly three years as part of a mixed team. We were responsible for delivering applications to help match Ukrainian guests with host families in Scotland, who offered their flats and...

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  • Paving the way to omnichannel

    2nd April 2025 by

    Guest blog from Emma Jones, Lead Content Designer at Social Security Scotland. An accessible, inclusive way to communicate At Social Security Scotland, we are at the start of a journey to move from ‘letters as default’ to a more inclusive, accessible approach. An approach where the method of communication meets the needs of the client....

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  • How designing for low English literacy empowers everyone

    21st February 2025 by

    Guest blog from Marta McCullough, Content Designer, Social Security Scotland. Imagine I’d named this blog ‘Jak projektowanie z myślą o osobach z niskim poziomem znajomości angielskiego wzmacnia pozycję wszystkich klientów’. Most of you, unless you speak Polish, would have thought ‘that page is not for me.’ If I’d written this blog in a language that’s...

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  • How text message notifications helped more than 2000 Social Security Scotland clients use unspent benefit payments

    22nd January 2025 by

    Guest blog post from Jake Keith, Content Designer, Social Security Scotland. A Social Security Scotland SMS (short Message Service) pilot led by the Product and Design team has helped hundreds of people access cash paid to them but left unspent. A total of 2,205 clients have spent money on their prepaid card since the start...

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  • Designing with purpose and empathy

    15th January 2025 by

    Guest blog post from Emma Jones, Content Design Lead, Social Security Scotland. Good content design is about making the user experience simple.  We need to design to help people do what they need to do, and no more. We need to focus on the purpose. Finding (and sticking to) the true purpose can be hard...

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  • Beyond ‘what is’

    8th January 2025 by

    Guest blog post from Josie Vallely, Senior Service Designer, Social Security Scotland. What will our new service design team look like? Like the medieval bestiary artists who were asked to paint creatures they had never seen in real life, we don’t know exactly what it will be, so we have the freedom of imagination to...

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  • Building confidence in content design

    18th December 2024 by

    Guest blog from Claire Robertson, Senior Content Designer, Social Security Scotland. Over the next few months, Social Security Scotland will be sharing a series of blogs from our User Centred Design team. We’ll give an insight into our ways of working and share some examples of our collaborative, user-centred approach. At Social Security Scotland, working...

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