A few months ago, I went to one of the really great (and free!) digital seminars run by Precedent Communications.

The main takeaway for digital progress in an organisation was to “start where you are”, which was interesting for me as one of the things I was working on at the time was creating a tool for the site which would allow all supporters to share examples of having challenged mental health stigma in their community, school, workplace or daily life.

As the needs of each group were so similar, I was keen to find a way to unite them into one resource that would work for everyone both internally and externally, without any UX compromises that would undermine the value and potential of the tool.

At the same time, I was aware of the need to view the tool’s creation in the context of other interactive areas of the site, to ensure we weren’t reinventing the wheel and dividing supporter attention between similar actions.

In ascertaining requirements, both internally and among key supporter groups who had initially expressed a need for the tool, I identified a significant functionality overlap between this project and something we had previously produced to support our national campaign drive in 2015. The campaigns team had been keen to find a way to ensure this bit of the site remained relevant beyond the campaign, so to my mind, this was a perfect opportunity to test out the “start where you are” philosophy.

Adopting this approach saved us a lot of time and money; we were able to get the tool built easily within our usual monthly sprint turnaround, and for just over £1,000. Most importantly, we were deploying to live having already worked out any UX kinks from the previous iteration, giving us a valuable product from the outset that supporters immediately began to take advantage of.

I’ll definitely be incorporating this into my thinking again!