Yorkshire Water's online account hadn't undergone a major update in more than seven years. Its ageing technology made incremental improvements difficult, while a wider replatforming and rebrand created an opportunity to redesign the experience.

The challenge was also a question of risk. Customers needed to continue managing important tasks such as payments, bills and properties. We needed to modernise the service without disrupting familiar functionality or introducing unnecessary complexity.

I started by speaking with customers who had different payment arrangements, metering situations and levels of digital confidence. We also gathered feedback from Yorkshire Water's online community, while recognising that its members might not represent every customer.

Through interviews, surveys and card sorting, I explored which features mattered most and how customers expected them to be organised. One finding shaped the design: showing people features that didn't apply to their account could create confusion.

Rather than building one identical experience for everyone, I focused on presenting the information and actions relevant to each customer's circumstances.

Show customers what matters to them. Hide what doesn't.

This principle informed the information architecture, account journeys and the way different account features appeared.

Bring the whole team into the problem.

Research and a review of the existing experience highlighted too many distractions. I used low-fidelity sketches and wireframes to explore simpler ways for customers to complete their tasks.

I also ran a Crazy 8s workshop with colleagues from different parts of the business, including the call centre and marketing. We shared customer pain points and research findings before generating ideas, discussing alternatives and voting on concepts to take forward.

This gave the team a shared understanding of the problem before we committed to a design direction.

I built high-fidelity, functional prototypes using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Nunjucks. This allowed us to test realistic account interactions rather than asking customers to imagine how static screens might behave.

Working closely with developers and testers, I mapped journeys for different account types. A customer with one property, for example, could move directly to their property information, while someone with multiple properties needed a different route.

We tested the experience with customers who represented different billing arrangements, identified usability issues and iterated on the design before finalising the interface.

Changing the platform, brand and interface at the same time introduced considerable risk. Reusing established, research-backed patterns and testing the new experience in rounds helped us make changes with greater confidence. We deliberately avoided adding unnecessary new features during the transition, creating a more stable foundation for future improvements.