TSRGD / Compliance software
Six hundred pages of law, searchable
Every UK highways team works to TSRGD. Almost nobody could actually use it.
Product design
UX architecture
Brand identity
The Challenge
TSRGD
Statutory compliance software
Product design, UX architecture, brand, marketing site
Free, authoritative, and close to unusable for the job it exists to do.
TSRGD sells a searchable version of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions, the statutory reference every UK highways team works to on signs, markings and signals. Getting it wrong is not a design problem, it is a legal one.
They came to us to turn a free government PDF into a product people would pay for.
The problem
The regulation was never the problem
Engineers knew roughly where things lived, scrolled to find them, then cross-checked schedules against items against amendments by hand. An afternoon went on confirming something they already half knew. The workflow was entrenched because there was no alternative, not because anyone defended it. Nobody in the sector was arguing that a six hundred page PDF was a good way to check a sign face. Two constraints made this harder than it looks. Statutory accuracy could not move by a single word, so nothing could be simplified in the way most software simplifies things. And the product had to persuade four different audiences to pay for something they were used to getting free, which is a commercial problem before it is a design one. That is the position most regulatory and compliance software starts from: the source material is authoritative and dense, the buyer is an expert who does not want the content changed, and the value has to come entirely from how it is reached rather than from what it says. Get that wrong and you have built an expensive copy of a free document. So search became the front door and the document structure became a result rather than a route. Schedules, items and amendments resolved into one view. Twelve hundred diagrams indexed alongside the text they belong to. Interface patterns engineers already knew, because a novel interaction is the last thing a regulatory tool needs.
The front door
Search first, structure second
The old workflow started with the document and hunted for the answer. This starts with the answer. Search returns the clause, the diagram and the amendment history together, and the document structure appears as context around the result rather than as the route to it.
One view
Three tabs became one screen
Cross-checking a schedule against an item against an amendment used to mean three references open at once and a manual reconciliation nobody enjoyed. They now resolve into a single view, with twelve hundred diagrams indexed alongside the text they belong to.
The budget case
Priced so the paid version is cheaper
An engineer had to walk into a budget conversation and justify paying for something the government publishes free. Per seat would have pushed teams back to sharing the PDF, so we priced per team, and built a savings calculator that makes the case in the buyer's own numbers.
