Pillar 2 — Top-up taxes at HMRC

The OECD's Pillar 2 framework is one of the biggest shifts in global tax policy in a decade — a 15% minimum corporate tax rate for the largest multinationals on the planet. No blueprint, evolving policy, real money attached.

My job: lead the User-Centred Design team at HMRC building the digital service for it. Two problems on day one. Translate dense, mutating policy into something accessible. And unify a fragmented multidisciplinary team that didn't have the tools or rituals to succeed.

The process was disjointed. Teams in silos, low-fi components, static screenshots, no shared visual language. Figma was off-limits. A content designer couldn't see their own work in context. Morale and velocity were both down.

I built a complete high-fidelity GDS component library from scratch — inside Mural. Not a static kit. Real components with happy and unhappy path states, the things a real service needs.

The library became a single source of truth across multiple agile teams. Designers, researchers and content specialists co-created visually in real time. Stakeholder demos turned from static slides into live co-design sessions — rapport went up, revision cycles dropped.

It earned that 'source of truth' status by being better than what came before. Not by mandate.

Look after the team, the team delivers exceptional work. That's the whole philosophy. Psychological safety as a baseline, not a perk. Approachable, present, actively mentoring every member.

I personally trained the team in interaction design principles. For some, I taught the basics of coding with the GDS Prototype Kit so they could ship clickable demos themselves — full ownership of an idea from concept to working prototype, no bottleneck through a single specialist.

It broke down discipline-specific barriers and produced a team of versatile, confident designers who could defend their ideas in any room.

What I'm proudest of isn't the product. It's that the Mural design system is now officially owned by the Pillar 2 team and actively used and enhanced by the wider UCD community at HMRC. It sparked a way of working that outlasted my involvement.

We went from a collection of individuals to a cohesive, high-performing UCD team. ~25% increase in project velocity, ~30% reduction in rework, five GDS assessments passed including a standalone accessibility review. 88–90% user satisfaction against the 85% government benchmark.

By focusing on people and process, we didn't just navigate a highly complex project — we built a stronger, more capable design culture behind it.