Digital checklist for partners and staff

If you’re with an agency, a freelancer or member of Shelter’s staff, this page lists things to consider about the way we work and Shelter's requirements throughout the product development process.

Checklist

Before you begin:

To deliver most effectively and make good use of our budget, it’s important to identify alignment with organisation goals and other plans. Have you aligned your work (where possible) with our anti-racism mission and our 2022-25 organisational strategy?
Have you started the project with a goal and a hypothesis? Discoveries should never start with a solution in mind.
The decisions we make must be based on user needs and other forms of evidence. Have you considered what user research might need to be done to inform your decisions? Check Shelter's User Research Best Practice. For questions contact ux@shelter.org.uk.

User Experience Design:

Have you ideated based on user insights rather than jumping to a single solution?
Our brand is a core element of how we align the design of our digital assets. Have you reviewed Shelter’s Brand Guidelines?
In order to provide an accessible and consistent experience across the whole of the Shelter website, we design using our UI kit. Have you reviewed the Components and Standard Page Templates in Shelter’s UI kit? For questions, contact ux@shelter.org.uk.
Have you followed Shelter’s UI foundations and ensured your design is inline with our standards, including our grid, spacing and icons?
Have you followed Shelter’s guidelines on colour, typography and logo use?

Service Design:

Have you understood the end to end user experience of the problem you’re trying to solve?
Have you understood any legal, policy and technical constraints within the problem space?
Do you have a good understanding of the dependencies and risks associated with the current problem space and any intended changes?

User Research:

Are you conducting research in an ethical way? Check Shelter's User Research Best Practice. For questions contact ux@shelter.org.uk.
Shelter is committed to ensuring its products and services are inclusive for all users. Are you ensuring the research is representative across ethnicities, disabilities, ages, gender and geographic location?
Are you choosing the right method/approach to meet the objectives of the research?

Delivery and Product Management:

Is your team writing and prioritising user stories?
Are you running sprint ceremonies such as stand-ups, planning and retrospectives?
Have you got the resources and budget to bring together and maintain a team that can offer the different skills required?
Do you have a good understanding of the various complexities, contexts and constraints in which you’re working?
Are your senior stakeholders aware of the project and it's aims, and bought into the team’s ways of working?

Content Design:

Have you used a logical, linear layout?
Have you used simple sentences and bullets?
Have you made headings and links descriptive?
Have you avoided inaccessible PDFs?
Does content adhere to Shelter’s house style and tone of voice?
Have you selected hero images with a minimum height of 500px and a minimum width of 1140px? Have you ensured that all other images are of similar quality?
Have you described images with ALT text?
Have you avoided using images which include text (unless a logo)?
Have you provided a transcript and closed captions for videos?

Development:

Shelter is committed to ensuring its website is accessible and inclusive for all users. This means our website needs to be WCAG 2.1 compliant.

Have you reviewed Shelter’s Accessibility Guidance & Best Practices?
Have you checked the WCAG Guidance when developing new features?
Are all elements navigable by keyboard?
Have you structured the page and content with valid and semantic html?
Have you built for mobile first and optimised for touch screens?
Has your code been peer reviewed and documented?
Does your code include tests and provide sufficient coverage for new features?

For questions contact webdev@shelter.org.uk.

Accessibility guides

Content guides and House style

Shelter’s brand guidelines