IPAFFS

Overview

At DEFRA, I was the Lead Interaction Designer on IPAFFS (Import of Products, Animals, Food and Feed System) — the UK government service used to notify imports of regulated goods and live animals entering Great Britain.

My work focused on redesigning the CHED-A live animal import journey, reducing complexity in a high-risk, highly regulated process. Alongside a content designer we improved content clarity, simplified complex form interactions, and helped users understand what was required, when, and why. This included introducing clearer progress tracking, improving error handling, and supporting new online inspection fee payments — all designed and tested using GOV.UK design patterns.

The outcome was a simplified end-to-end journey that reduced user error in a high-risk import process by making complex regulatory requirements easier to understand and less onerous to complete.

What was delivered

• Redesigned the CHED-A live animal import journey, reducing unnecessary steps and simplifying complex interactions such as commodity code selection

• Introduced a notification hub, using the GOV.UK checklist pattern to help users track progress, save work, and return later with confidence

• Designed a new payment journey to support online inspection fee payments within IPAFFS

• Rebuilt the full IPAFFS prototype in Figma, using the GOV.UK prototyping toolkit to replace legacy Axure wireframes

• Created a single, end-to-end testable prototype, enabling usability testing, service-wide gap analysis, and clearer stakeholder alignment