Earlier this year, the government set out its vision for a bold new era of UK trade. The Trade Strategy aims to get more businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), exporting and growing internationally. It’s an ambitious goal that could transform the UK’s economic resilience and competitiveness.
But here’s the thing: policy ambition alone won’t convince businesses to start trading overseas. For many, international trade remains too complex, too bureaucratic, and too risky. If we want more UK firms to trade globally, we must design trade systems around the people who use them, not just policies that govern them.
What public service design teaches us
This isn't uncharted territory. The government's Public Design Evidence Review made it crystal clear: human-centred design works. When we build trust, we increase uptake. When we simplify complexity, we reduce inefficiencies. When we co-create and prototype, we break down silos. And crucially, good design takes an end-to-end view.
In healthcare, immigration, and justice, we’ve seen design make services more accessible, efficient, and trusted (see case studies here). The same principles can transform international trade.
The trade system’s design challenge
Today, too many SMEs face barriers that are as much about design flaws as they are about regulation:
- Repeated data entry across multiple, disconnected systems.
- Confusing commodity codes and unclear guidance.
- Limited feedback loops that prevent policymakers from seeing how services really land with businesses.
The result? Smaller firms often give up before they’ve even started exporting.
Digitalisation promises to change this. From electronic trade documents (ETDs) to digital corridors, the Trade Strategy rightly places technology at its core. But we can't just digitise today's broken systems. Without a human-centred, end-to-end design, we risk digitising complexity rather than removing it. Interoperability and collaboration across government departments are first and foremost design challenges, not technology ones.
Our blueprint for design-led trade
So, what would a design-led approach to trade look like? At Transform, we see four key ingredients:
- Enable collaboration, by breaking down silos and aligning agencies around the business journey.
- Prototype for clarity, by simplifying processes and reducing errors before they’re scaled nationally.
- Facilitate co-creation by bringing SMEs, policymakers, and service providers together to shape effective solutions.
- Map systems and feedback loops to ensure services adapt continuously to real-world needs.
These actions are underpinned by core principles for success:
- Focus on outcomes and avoid 'design theatre’: Co-create metrics and align with delivery to evidence impact
- Use participatory approaches to bridge silos, share ownership and build legitimacy
- Engage with the organisational goals to navigate institutional constraints
- Experiment and scale successful models, while documenting failures and iterations openly to grow design maturity
This creates trade services that feel joined-up, intuitive, and trustworthy. Done well, it lowers barriers to entry, builds confidence, and makes exporting a viable growth strategy for more firms.
Why this matters now
The government’s ambition to expand UK trade won’t succeed without design reform. The Public Design Evidence Review provides the evidence, and our work across public services shows the practice.
Human-centred design also provides the missing link that makes digitalisation work. End-to-end design ensures that new digital systems are interoperable, intuitive, and collaborative across departments. It aligns technology with the real-world needs of exporters, ensuring that digitalisation doesn’t just digitise old problems but actively solves them.
A human-centred trade system would boost SME engagement, improve compliance while reducing friction, and deliver better value for government investment.
Looking to the future
Trade must be designed for the people who use it. Only then will policy ambition translate into the behavioural change needed. If we want a nation of traders, we need to start by designing trade like a service people want to use.
The UK has the strategy, the ambition, and some of the digital tools. What’s needed now is a design-led approach to bring it all together. This means embedding human-centred design into every stage - not as an afterthought, but as the foundation.
We’re ready to design trade systems that work for everyone. Are you? Let’s talk.