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

For 7 years James was CSC’s global solution and programme director on the senior management team for the overseas biometric-enabled visa application programme, working alongside stakeholders in the UK, Australian and some Schengen governments.

He was directly responsible for the in-country set up of visa application centres in:

  • the Americas
  • Western Europe
  • North Africa
  • the Middle East (including Iraq)

This responsibility included:

  • building acquisition and fit-out
  • local staff recruitment and training
  • business process enablement
  • IT and biometric installation
  • business readiness testing

He was subsequently responsible for providing business process outsourcing (BPO) proposals for all CSC’s visa-related public sector bids. He worked on a number of customer pursuits including those for the NHS, the MOD, the Home Office, FCO, BAE and the BBC.

Other roles at CSC included:

  • managing consultant specialising in information design
  • emerging technology practice manager
  • solution director and proposal writer
  • BPO solution designer for telehealth and coordinated healthcare

Prior to CSC, James was a:

  • Managing Information Consultant at TMS Information Solutions
  • Principal User Interface Designer at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
  • Lead Technical Author at Camtec Electronics
  • Technical Author at Phillips Electronics (working in the Netherlands)