MoJ - Request a Solicitor (RAS)
Mapping a fragmented, multi-actor custody service into a single joined-up journey - including research inside a custody suite.
The problem
When someone is arrested and detained at a police station, they have the right to a Duty Solicitor. The process for making that happen - across custody sergeants, detention officers, duty solicitors, and DSCC agents - was fragmented, manual, and not designed as a joined-up service. Each user group had different needs, different contexts, and different constraints. There was no single digital service holding it together, and building one meant designing across a genuinely complex multi-actor journey with no obvious precedent to follow.
What I did about the problem
I mapped the full end-to-end service flow across all user groups and produced updated screen flows after every design iteration - so the team always had a clear picture of how pages and components connected, not just individual screens in isolation. I ran 9 internal design reviews using the MoJ crit feedback system in Miro, which became a reliable weekly rhythm for surfacing issues and making decisions together. I went to a custody suite in Surrey to do research with real users in their actual environment - and those findings shaped the prototype directly. I also trialled the MoJ Form Builder as a new tooling recommendation, documented where it fell short, and fed that back to the wider team so others didn't have to find out the hard way.
What came out the other side
The service was tested across two rounds of usability testing with a validated case list pattern ready to progress. The internal design review process gave the team a structured way to make and communicate design decisions throughout alpha - and the custody suite visit produced findings that wouldn't have surfaced in a remote session.
What I learned
Multi-user services are only as strong as your understanding of where the journeys intersect. Designing in isolation for one user group creates problems downstream for another. The screen flows were what kept that joined-up thinking visible.