James Ellis – Content Designer

About James

James is a freelance Content Designer. He designs content for UK central and local government departments, not-for-profit organisations and the private sector.

He is:

  • an advocate of ‘content first’ user centred design
  • skilled in using AI to develop user experience workflows and to provide content governance
  • an experienced collaborator with business stakeholders, product and project managers, user researchers, business analysts and interaction designers
  • experienced in designing content that meets GOV.UK Digital System (GDS) and WCAG standards and guidelines
  • experienced in working at pace using agile and iterative methods
  • skilled in turning complex policies and processes into straightforward inclusive and accessible information
  • skilled in content auditing, information architecture design and tone-of-voice design
  • experienced in prototyping interactive user journeys including touchpoints with email, SMS, help and microcopy page assets such as buttons and callouts
  • experienced in content maintenance and renovation using heat maps, Google Analytics and Silktide

James has designed and developed content for:

Experience

Design

  • Government Digital Service (GDS) style guide
  • Plain English standards
  • User Centred Design (UCD)
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

AI

  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • CoPilot
  • Grammarly

Collaboration

  • Confluence
  • Figma
  • Miro
  • Sharepoint
  • Silktide
  • Slack
  • Teams

Content management

  • GatherContent
  • Gutenberg
  • Jadu
  • SPM
  • Umbraco
  • WordPress

References

Available on request.

Some recent assignments

The National Lottery Community Fund
https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/
December 2025 to September 2026

James worked with senior funding officers and the programme team to develop content for the Young Start Main and Small Grants, and Northern Ireland Strengthening Communities programmes.

He designed and wrote the Evidence and Impact summaries for the Fund’s evidence library. These were agile programmes based on squads and sprints using Jira workflow and Kanban boards.

James published content to the live website using Umbraco and collaborated with his colleagues and stakeholders using Teams, Miro and Sharepoint.

Scottish Social Security Directorate
https://www.mygov.scot/
October 2022 to July 2025

James was part of the User Centred Design (UCD) group. He worked with business stakeholders, business analysts, interaction designers and user researchers to design GDS-based content that delivered the best user journey for people applying for benefits in Scotland.

This was a fast-paced programme that provided new content and service improvement content. During his time at the directorate, he worked for both the client representatives team and the Carer Support Payment team. This included designing:

  • mygov.scot and digital portal content
  • end-to-end operational guidance for client advisors
  • notifications (letters, email and SMS) for benefit applicants and those receiving benefits
  • service improvements based on research findings and policy updates

Broxbourne Borough Council
https://www.broxbourne.gov.uk
March 2019 to March 2022

James was the lead content designer. During his time working with the Council he was responsible for:

  • all content for web pages, email and confirmation pages, form and field titles, error messages and hint text
  • content audits and editorial changes to the main council website
  • COVID-19 updates to support businesses and individuals
  • content design to support new customer journeys for new council services
  • migrating content from the original website to the new website
  • tone of voice and writing guidelines for digital services and social media platforms
  • privacy policy and cookie notices
  • screen text for location assets

UK Visa and Citizenship Applications Services
https://www.ukvcas.co.uk
May 2018 to September 2018

James was the lead content designer responsible for:

  • tone of voice and writing guidelines
  • all content for core and additional services, cookie notices, alerts and error messages
  • all location assets including posters and screen text

Earlier career summary

Previous roles include:

Solution Director for CSC Computer Sciences working with the:

  • Solution Director for CSC Computer Sciences working with the:
  • NHS to develop CSC’s healthcare offerings, specifically the business process aspects of Telehealth and Integrated and Coordinated care. James worked alongside clinicians and healthcare experts, patients, CCGs and Acute Trusts to develop patient-centric and technology-enabled solutions, as well as existing industry providers
  • Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deliver CSC’s offshore biometric visa application centres
  • Ministry of Defence to deliver the Defence Integrated Infrastructure (DII)
  • Department of Health to deliver their NHS UK spine

Managing Information Consultant for TMS Information Solutions
Principal User Interface Designer for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
Lead Technical Author for Camtec Electronics
Technical Author for Phillips Electronics