Provide guidance and examples for using product names in the header

[36degrees]

What

Provide guidance and examples for using product names in the header, like 'GOV.UK Design System' or 'GOV.UK Pay'.

Why

The header in GOV.UK Frontend can be used with a product name rather than a service name, but we don't provide any examples of this in the Design System, nor do we have any guidance about when it's appropriate to use them.

Who needs to know about this

?

Related

Product name wraps onto new line with non full-width header alphagov/govuk-frontend#1502

[hannalaakso]

Notes from team discussion:

• The guidance could explain that product name is more relevant for GOV.UK Pay, Notify etc.

[joelanman]

Had a support request about this

[edwardhorsford]

The guidance could explain that product name is more relevant for GOV.UK Pay, Notify etc.

I'd be curious why it's more relevant for those things. What is different about services offered by GDS than elsewhere in gov?

I expect the answer might be that they are "platforms" - but then what about Digital Marketplace?

My personal view is that the position of the product name works better where a service is using a noun based name than a verb based name. My last service adopted the product name pattern and it sits much better:

[techforevil]

It would be great to have this explained in the design system, we decided to use the product pattern on our (internally facing) product as it doesn't really need to link to gov.uk separately but I really struggled with figuring out how to change it. Thanks to Ed for helping on xgov Slack. 👏

[querkmachine]

I have a few reckons on how this could be defined.

A lot of those thoughts are rooted in the way that the productName is both visually and semantically merged with the GOV.UK branding in a way that serviceName is not, and how that could change the perception of the brand to a user.

It depends on what the 'homepage' is

If the aim of the service is to be part of the continuous 'one website' experience of GOV.UK, the website's homepage from the user's perspective is that of GOV.UK.

In this case, the service should set serviceName and serviceUrl, so that clicking the "GOV.UK" logotype still returns the user to the GOV.UK homepage.

Products and platforms (like the Design System, Pay, Notify, Digital Marketplace, the Service Manual, etc.) are intentionally not part of the 'one website' experience for reasons given below. Users are more likely to have come directly to those pages and not via the main GOV.UK website.

They are related, but standalone websites. These should use productName and homepageUrl to point to the homepage of the product or platform, not to the GOV.UK homepage.

It depends on who the content is aimed at

Pages that fit the GOV.UK proposition of allowing citizens to access government services and information are aimed at the general public. This extends to most pages or services that can be found by browsing the GOV.UK website. As these are all part of the 'one website' experience, the GOV.UK branding should be treated consistently, and serviceName used to maintain a separation between the brand name and the service name.

Products and platforms are not aimed at the general public, but at other civil servants and people working alongside government. As before, these are distinctly different from the main GOV.UK proposition, and thus benefit from being branded as related, but standalone websites.

The same could be argued for internally-facing systems and caseworking tools. Under this definition, they would be allowed to use productName and to set the homepageUrl to something other than the GOV.UK homepage too.

It depends on the name / ownership of the content

Probably the cleanest cut way to judge them, and the one that was probably the original intention, in my opinion.

These things have 'GOV.UK' as part of their official names. These are all things by, for, or about GOV.UK, and by using productName they get appropriately branded as such.

• GOV.UK Design System
• GOV.UK Digital Service Platform
• GOV.UK Forms
• GOV.UK Notify
• GOV.UK One Login
• GOV.UK Pay
• GOV.UK Prototype Kit

These things do not have 'GOV.UK' as part of their official names. They are not by, for, or about GOV.UK, they are only hosted on it. They shouldn't use productName.

• Civil Service Jobs
• Digital Marketplace
• Product safety database

If you used productName here, the main heading of the page will now read something like 'GOV.UK Digital Marketplace', which is an incorrect, possibly misleading, attribution of ownership.¹

• These are job vacancies for the whole civil service, not vacancies just for GOV.UK/GDS.
• It's a procurement marketplace for all government departments, not just for GOV.UK employees.
• It's a safety database for all products, not just the products GOV.UK produces.

There's still a little grey area with this one. The Service Manual doesn't have the GOV.UK brand as part of its name officially, but is commonly referred to as 'the GOV.UK Service Manual' to differentiate it from others.

Footnotes

1. Digital Marketplace was originally built by GDS, but is operated by the Crown Commercial Service. ↩