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Continuous iteration

How we launched remote voting in the House of Lords and made history

Photo of peers debating via TV link in the House of Lords 15 June 2020

After successfully developing a remote voting system for the House of Commons, PDS turned attention to the House of Lords. Senior project manager Iain MacKinnon tells us how a new platform that does more than count votes came to life in 5 short weeks.

MPs make history with remote voting – the story of how it happened

First virtual PMQs and Ministerial statement on Coronavirus 22/04/2020

On Tuesday 12 May, history was made with the first ever remote division (vote) in the House of Commons. How does remote voting work, what were the challenges, and what’s next? PDS Director of Software Engineering tells the story.

Why we need to care about search engines

We wanted to find out what is happening in the world of search, so a PDS product manager and performance analyst went to Brighton to see how we could use the latest tools to perform better in online searches.

Why everyone needs to be in the room for user research

User research session with observers sitting round a TV screen

Franny Gant writes about bringing everyone together for user research for a recent project and why it's important to have the right people in the room.

Building a new online catalogue for the Parliamentary Archives

Screenshot of the Parliamentary Archives homepage

We recently completed a project with the Parliamentary Archives to create a new website and we talk about the lessons we learned in this blog post.

Working on the 'get kit' service design workstream

A member of the 'get kit' group looking at the prototypes displayed on a wall

We've recently been looking to improve how our users get their software and hardware when they join Parliament. Dan Barrett and Sian Hodges have written about the last eight weeks of work, what they did, and what they learned.