Personal learning plans for prisoners

Education is one of the strongest levers against reoffending — but for the people most likely to benefit, the tools to plan and evidence their own learning were patchy at best. The MoJ brief was to build a service that put each person's learning plan in their own hands, while giving staff a clear view of progress and the interventions available to them.

The hard part wasn't the software. It was building something that would work in the environment — with the constraints, security requirements, and day-to-day realities of a prison.

On-site user research — including at a Category A prison — with both prisoners and education staff, running observed sessions and semi-structured interviews.

Designing to the GOV.UK Service Standard and GOV.UK Design System, so the service sat comfortably alongside the rest of the gov.uk estate.

Iterating tightly on interaction patterns with content and interaction designers — the clarity of the service mattered enormously to its users.

Writing thorough automated tests so regressions couldn't slip into an environment where fixes take longer to roll out.