Lines of questioning — Beta design

Point 3 — Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Ask:

• Show the phone, paper, and face-to-face routes a user can actually use this week.
• What does the member of staff see when the user has already started online?
• Where does GOV.UK guidance differ from the script or the screen?
• What happens to a user who starts on paper and later tries to finish online?

Evidence to request: channel scripts, a staff view of case state, a worked example of a non-digital completion.

Answers that indicate Met: a non-digital completion has happened in private beta, and the record matches a digital one.

Answers that indicate Not Met: the alternative channel is unstaffed or unprocessed. Red line B4.

Point 4 — Make the service simple to use

Ask:

• Which GOV.UK patterns did you reject, and what did users do with the replacement?
• What reading-age check did you run, and which sentences changed because of it?
• Show an error. What does it tell the user to do, and do they keep their answers?
• Which question did you remove during private beta because users did not need it?

Evidence to request: a pattern inventory, a reading-age result and the diff, an error-recovery walkthrough.

Answers that indicate Met: the team can show a deleted question and an error that a user recovered from without help.

Answers that indicate Not Met: internal field names are the labels, or a validation error dumps the user at the start.

Point 5 — Make sure everyone can use it

Ask:

• Who operates assisted digital, what hours, and what are they allowed to do on the user's behalf?
• How is that help recorded so the user is not asked to repeat it?
• Which custom component have you checked with a screen reader user? If the answer is none, say so and leave the session gap to user research.
• What is on the accessibility statement that the current build does not match?

Evidence to request: assisted-digital operating procedure, roster, and a recent case. Do not accept the statement as the route.

Answers that indicate Met: a named team does the assisted route, and it has been used.

Answers that indicate Not Met: no operational fallback. Red line B4. Also say, when it is true, that design compliance does not substitute for JAWS, NVDA, magnifier, or speech-input research.

Point 13 — Use open standards and common platforms

Ask:

• Which pages are GOV.UK Frontend, and which are custom?
• For each custom component, where is the research that a Design System pattern could not do the job?
• Who approves a new component, and is the default "use the Design System"?

Evidence to request: component list split into Design System and custom, research notes for the custom ones.

Answers that indicate Met: custom UI is exceptional and tested.

Answers that indicate Not Met: a parallel design system, or custom form controls for names, addresses, dates, or errors.

Reading-age probe

If the team cannot say how they checked reading age, point 4 is not fully evidenced. Treat that as a gap. If the content is also full of internal terms a private beta user stumbled on, the point is Not Met.