NEC Digital Studio becomes National Deaf Children’s Society Design partner

The National Deaf Children’s Society, the UK’s leading charity for deaf children and young people, is partnering with NEC Digital Studio to undertake a major website redesign project.

Following the launch of its new five-year strategy, ‘Every Moment Counts’, the National Deaf Children’s Society’s goal is to provide life-changing support to even more deaf children and their families as early in their deaf journey as possible, and especially during the crucial early years. The charity’s digital products and services will play a fundamental role in achieving this, with the website being a key delivery channel.

As its chosen design partner, NEC Digital Studio will support the charity’s ambition to take an evidence-based, user-centred approach to redesigning a new website that inspires and empowers its users whilst supporting the charity to achieve its strategic objectives.

Solving the right user problems

With multiple primary and secondary user journeys to consider, the National Deaf Children’s Society requested support to navigate this complexity and understand user needs, as well as the role a new website can play in supporting them.

With an ambition to be innovative through content, design and technology, NEC Digital Studio’s multi-disciplinary project team combines researchers, service designers, content designers, interaction designers and accessibility experts to guide the charity through the process.

Adopting agile ways of working

Following a recent organisational transformation, the National Deaf Children’s Society is running the website redesign as a scaled agile project, with workstreams coordinated through a central project team.

NEC Digital Studio are currently integrating into the charity’s project team, building alignment on agile processes together and fostering collaboration to build the project’s momentum as one team.

Running over the course of the next five months, the website redesign project will follow four key phases – discovery, definition, design and delivery.

Establishing a long-term partnership

It was crucial to the National Deaf Children’s Society team that the relationship built with its design partner extended beyond the project scope. NEC Digital Studio will ensure this by supporting the charity in its design maturity journey as an organisation over the course of this project, specifically through mentoring and knowledge transfer.

Redesigning the National Deaf Children’s Society’s website using a collaborative co-design approach will enable the project team to be part of the design journey and help to create a design-thinking culture within the organisation. Additionally, by setting up content governance structures and internal approval processes, NEC Digital Studio will help the National Deaf Children’s Society ensure its content is accessible, meaningful and of the highest standard. By equipping its team with user-centred design capabilities, the charity can keep building on the website’s design in the future.

“We’re excited to kick off this rewarding project with the National Deaf Children’s Society, a charity that makes such a life-changing difference to deaf children, young people and their families. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve hit the ground running and are eager to collaborate, learn from one another, and make a meaningful difference together.”

Martyn Dawson, Project Director, NEC Digital Studio

“We’re delighted to be working in partnership with NEC Digital Studio on the ambitious project to make our website as good as it can possibly be for the deaf children and their families who rely on our support. We want a website that inspires and empowers our customers. Above all, we need a website that will help us reach even more deaf children and their families at a most critical time in their lives.”

Tim Housden, Project Lead of the National Deaf Children’s Society’s website redesign project.

At NEC Digital Studio, we’re experts in user-centred research and design, connecting deep strategic thinking with design to tackle the most complex challenges. Find out more on our Research and Design webpage.