This is not a page.It is a map.
Verso Atlas is a five-person research practice. Everything we have published sits on this canvas — drag to move, scroll to zoom, or use the list on the left.
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Start here
Five people — two designers, an ethnographer, a statistician and a policy lead. We take three commissions a year, all of them about how public systems are actually used rather than how they were specified.
Why the queue got longer
A ticketing redesign that tested beautifully and failed in the concourse. We watched 4,100 transactions and found the problem was not the interface at all.
The form nobody finished
A benefits application with a 62% abandonment rate. Rebuilt around what applicants actually had to hand, rather than what the department wanted to know first.
Six minutes is the cliff
Across four unrelated public services, completion collapses somewhere between five and seven minutes of continuous attention. Below six, most people finish. Above it, most do not.
Reading a hospital at 3am
Wayfinding for people who are frightened, in pain, or arriving in the dark. Tested with people who had actually done it.
On watching instead of asking
People are reliable narrators of what they want and unreliable narrators of what they do. Both matter, but only one can be observed.
The pilot that never ends
A pilot with no defined end is a way of avoiding the decision to roll out or to stop. We now write the end condition into the first week of every engagement.
What we will not do
No unmoderated remote testing as primary evidence. No surveys as a substitute for observation. No recommendations we have not watched someone try.
Work with us
We take on three pieces of work a year and we are usually booked two quarters out. Tell us what is going wrong and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people.