The problem
Situations nobody had advised on before: two rents because of a travel ban, repairs you couldn't let into the house, housemates who wanted you out. Face-to-face help had closed, and 75% of visits were on mobile.
Case study · Shelter
Housing advice when the rules changed every week.
In March 2020 Shelter's face-to-face hubs closed just as demand for housing advice rose. People needed answers on their phones, and the law behind those answers changed almost daily. I was Senior UX Designer in the cross-functional team that designed Shelter's digital response.
At a glance
The short version
What I did
Designed how people reached one emergency advice page, kept a fast-growing page usable on a phone, and used search, analytics and feedback to decide what to change next.
What changed
1.5 million pageviews, a quarter of all traffic to the site. A rent negotiation page built from user feedback became the most clicked next step.
My part
One discipline in a team of many
I owned the user experience of the advice journey: how people found the page, how they moved through it on a phone, and what they did next. I worked from site search data, the analytics dashboard and Hotjar feedback, and brought what I found to our daily stand-up.
I worked alongside Marida Maiorino, our Senior Service Designer, who led the research synthesis, and Catherine Dickinson and the content team, who wrote and kept the advice up to date. The decisions below were made together.
How the work ran
Five steps, repeated for months
- ListenDaily analysis of helpline and webchat conversations.
- StructureOne page for many audiences, built to be scanned. Live 19 March.
- RouteA global banner, so nobody had to search for the advice.
- MeasureSmall, evidence-backed changes over untested new patterns.
- ExtendA rent negotiation letter, built from what people asked for next.
What the research showed
Mapped as the law changed
- Law and services
- What tenants told us
- What landlords told us
Stage 1 · Before lockdown
- 9 MarchCoronavirus takes hold
- LawNo change
- ServicesStill operating
Tenant“I want to return to the UK.”
Tenant“I'm worried I will be stuck in another country.”
Landlord“I'm scared of catching the virus from my lodger.”
- 16 March
- LawNo change, limited government guidance
- ServicesStill operating, some closures
Tenant“I want to return to the UK but I'm worried I can't get back because of flights.”
Landlord“I'm beginning to worry about my rental business. I can see people falling into rent arrears if this goes on much longer.”
Stage 2 · Lockdown
- 23 MarchLockdown begins
Landlord“I have others in the household who want to leave to save paying me rent. I can't have someone from abroad moving in. That will be another excuse.”
- 24 March
- LawNo evictions for three months, mortgage holiday for some landlords
- ServicesStill operating, some closures
Tenant“My landlord won't negotiate. They want me to quarantine when I get back before I move in.”
Landlord“I'm reluctant to negotiate. I need to keep my business going. This is how I've interpreted the change in law.”
- 6 April
- ServicesVery limited flights to and from the UK. Letting agents and landlords offering limited service
Tenant“I want to return to the UK but there are no flights, and I can't move during lockdown.”
Tenant“I want to go back to Spain to stay with my family, but I can't find a replacement for my room and my landlord won't reply.”
- 14 April
- LawOpposition lobbying for better terms for renters
- ServicesVery stretched and under pressure
Tenant“My landlord is trying to get rid of my belongings and rent my room to someone else.”
Tenant“My roommates don't want me to come back from Italy during lockdown.”
Landlord“You can't have your deposit back, or skip the last three months of a student contract, just because you had to leave university early.”
Adapted from the travel ban timeline by Marida Maiorino, built from helpline and webchat conversations between 9 March and 14 April 2020. Quotes lightly edited for reading. It gave the whole team one shared picture, and let us predict what people would ask next.
Getting people to the page
Search told us where to look
Choosing the safe change
Long page, small screens
Considered: an accordion
Every section visible at a glance, opened one at a time. A shorter page on a phone, but a new pattern for our advice and untested with people under stress.
Shipped: small changes, backed by data
Sections reordered by demand, urgency and risk. Changes checked against the analytics dashboard, and weekly catch-ups with housing advisers on what their clients faced.
1.5mPageviews of the coronavirus advice page by July 2020
25%Of all Shelter website pageviews in that period
+45%Unique pageviews across the site, March to June, compared with 2019
75%Of visits on mobile
What I took from it
- Mobile first, for realThree in four people read the advice on a phone, often in a hurry and under stress. Every decision about length, order and navigation started there.
- Numbers and stories need each otherSearch data told us what was common. The conversations told us what was urgent. We needed both to set priorities.
- The best next step is something to doThe most clicked link from the advice page was a letter people could send. Advice became useful once it turned into an action.
With Marida Maiorino (service design), Catherine Dickinson and the Digital Advice team (content), and Shelter's user research, development, analytics and housing advice teams.