01 — Web platforms
A shared space. Clear responsibilities.
A client portal, management interface or internal tool should help each person find the information they need and act within their role. Those journeys and the rules connecting them are the starting point.
One dossier, different roles
An example of how responsibilities can be divided within a portal.
The shared dossier
Information · versions · history
The client
Supplies the requested information and sees the requests that concern them.
The team
Develops the dossier and prepares the information needed for examination.
The responsible reviewer
Examines the available material and records an assessment.
Each role receives the access required for its task. A shared dossier does not require identical permissions.
Look at the whole journey
Who supplies information? Who can view it, change it or make a decision? The brief describes these responsibilities before translating them into screens and access permissions.
It also captures the situations that complicate everyday work: a missing document, a request coming back, a change of responsibility or simultaneous edits. These situations belong in the design.
Connect the interfaces to the right information
Depending on the agreed scope, a platform may bring together a portal, management tools, search and exports. Integrations depend on the access and interfaces available in your existing systems.
Authentication, permissions, traceability and hosting arrangements need to be defined and verified for the project. A prototype makes the experience reviewable; system testing then needs to establish that the underlying behavior works.
A scope to agree together
- Documented priority journeys, roles and acceptance criteria
- A prototype of the interfaces and their relevant states
- The application and integrations within the agreed scope
- Tests of access, errors and significant operations
- Documentation and agreed access handover arrangements
Where it can help
- Organisations bringing a client journey and management interface together
- Teams that share information under different permissions
- Work that requires a retrievable history of a dossier or operation
Possible technical choices
- TypeScript
- Next.js / React
- PostgreSQL
- Existing system APIs
Common questions
- How do you establish the schedule and budget?
- They follow from the scope, integrations and identified dependencies. The proposal should state the deliverables, review stages and assumptions that could affect the schedule.
- Can we keep our existing tools?
- We assess how they can be reused while defining the brief. This depends on available interfaces, access rights, data quality and the responsibilities of each provider.
- How are hosting and handover agreed?
- The hosting environment, data-processing conditions, rights in the deliverables and access handover need to be set out in the project documents. An interface alone does not establish where data is hosted or how it is protected.
What would you like to make simpler?
A client journey, an internal tool, a document task: tell us about the context and the change you want to make. That first conversation helps define the work ahead.
Discuss a project