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Service manual
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    Suggest a new feature

    Overview

    Important information:

    This process requires a GitHub account.

    If you are not a GitHub user, please contact the design system team.

    Example of a 'new feature'

    • A new component or pattern
    • A new variant of an existing component or pattern
    • New feature within the ONS prototype kit
    • Ideas for new content on the service manual

    How to suggest a new feature

    If you would like to suggest a new feature for the service manual, design system, prototype kit or Figma libraries, please follow these steps:

    1. Create a GitHub account  (opens in a new tab) 

    If you do not already have one, this should take approximately 5 minutes to setup and you only need to do this once

    2. Please review how we carry your proposal forward 

    Before suggesting a new feature, you will need to evidence that your proposal is 

    • useful - that it could be used by many ONS teams or services
    • unique - there is not something similar already in the Design System

    3. Propose a new feature in GitHub
 (opens in a new tab) 

    The form will ask for the following information so please make sure you have it available:

    • Describe new feature
    • Explain why this feature should be added, including evidence
    • Any supporting materials including examples, research, prototypes or code
    • Contacts from your team to include in this discussion moving forward

    4. Submit the form to the Design System team

    We will review your submission and get back to you about next steps.

    How we carry your proposal forward

    After your proposal has been prioritised but before it is published, the Design System team reviews it against these criteria to make sure it is:

    Usable

    You will need to show that you have done user research that shows that your proposal works with a representative sample of users, including people with disabilities.

    If there is not enough research yet to show that it is usable, a component or pattern can still be published with an “Experimental” tag.

    However, you must still show relevant second-hand user research and it must meet the other criteria.

    Consistent

    Where relevant, your proposal must use our existing foundations and components.

    Any content, including the guidance for a pattern or component, must follow our Content style guide.

    If there is code, it must follow the ONS frontend coding standards and be ready to be merged into the ONS frontend library.

    Versatile

    Your proposal is versatile enough to be used in a range of different services.

    For example, a versatile date input component could be set up to ask for:

    • a year only
    • a month and year only
    • a precise date
    • any other combination

    The proposal needs to be tested to ensure it works with a range of browsers, assistive technologies and devices.

    Further help

    If you need further help or have any questions, contact the design system team.

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