A new start for Homes for Ukraine

The Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme was introduced in 2022 in response to Russia’s full scale illegal invasion of Ukraine. It enables Ukrainians fleeing the conflict to find safe accommodation with UK hosts.  

You can read more about how our team created ‘Share Homes for Ukraine data’, our new, sustainable in-house system (or digital service) to support this humanitarian crisis, transitioning from emergency response to long-term transformation.

Moving on from the old platform

As the new system took shape, it was called by a variety of names. Some of these referenced the old platform, which we needed to move on from. At other times, it was referred to as ‘future tech’ or ‘the new thing’.

We didn’t want any of these internal nicknames to become embedded, as, from experience, they can be hard to shake off.

So, before we told users about the new system, we needed to decide on the name.

Bringing stakeholders with us

Deadlines were tight, so there wasn’t time for extensive user research around the name.

Naming can be an emotive topic, especially for the people closest to a service, so we needed to bring our stakeholders along with us. It was important that everyone understood the rationale behind the new name, particularly the people who would be guiding our users through the transition.

As the content designer on the team, I invited key stakeholders across the Homes for Ukraine digital and policy teams to a naming workshop.

I began by setting out the goals and expectations for the session. We didn’t want to go with the most popular choice. We weren’t going to vote for our favourites or make a final decision during the workshop.

Understanding good names

We established the naming architecture for the system, underneath the Homes for Ukraine service.

A diagram showing the naming architecture for the system.

We looked at some good examples of existing service names:

Register to vote – previously Individual Electoral Registration System Get help with court fees – previously Fee Remission Renew your passport Find an apprenticeship

We also looked at some confusing, "bad" names, that told us little about the product or service.

We agreed that a good name:

will be OK if heard by public or press will work for potential future groups of guests will adapt to any future changes to the service and policies will be good enough will do what it says on the tin

And the name will not:

be perfect be abstract or poetic be an acronym or initialism need a dictionary to understand

I then took our stakeholders through the government Service Manual advice on naming a government service. The system isn’t public facing, so following the naming pattern for a government service wasn’t mandatory, although we still found the patterns a useful guide to ensure we created a name that would be accessible, trusted and understood.

After that, we got stuck into the mural board to put down all our ideas for describing the system. We used a series of prompts to inspire us:

what we offer what the system helps us do why we do it who we do it for how we do it when and where we do it

We came up with over 50 words and phrases to describe the system. Between us, we organised these words into a quadrant. We ranked each word against two criteria. The vertical axis ranked words from ‘not task-focused’ at the bottom to ‘describes the task’ at the top. On the horizontal axis we ranked from ‘poetic’ to ‘plain English’.

Our mural board we used to rank the different names we came up with.

That gave us a selection of words and phrases that sat in the top right corner, both describing the task and in plain English. We removed the other 3 sections and used a bigger version of the top right section to rank the best ones more ruthlessly, based on our acceptance criteria. We discussed these as a group and removed a few more that didn’t fit.

That gave us a selection of very strong contenders for the name.

Research and stress testing

Following the workshop, I discussed the shortlist in more detail with our Head of Product. We played around with a few alternatives, looking at words with similar meanings, and changing the order of the words. Others were removed as they weren’t suitable for certain potential use cases.

We agreed on the most suitable name, ‘Share Homes for Ukraine data’, plus a back-up using ‘Manage’ instead of ‘Share’.

Then I went off to conduct some final, desk-based research.

Existing service names

We didn’t want our name to clash with any other services or systems, so I explored what was already out there. I found nothing that overlapped with our name.

‘Data’ was a word that came up a lot in the workshop. It can sound like jargon, but it’s commonly used and much shorter than ‘information’. So, I checked to see if ‘data’ was used by other government services. I found a few that already had ‘data’ in the name, so we decided it was appropriate to use.

Checking user research

The user researchers on the Homes for Ukraine team did a quick review of their previous transcripts. That showed us the sort of words that came up naturally during our early discovery and user testing sessions with local authorities (LAs). This confirmed that our name used words the LAs were already familiar with. It reflected how they describe the tasks they perform on the system.

Avoiding bad names

I needed to check there weren’t going to be any embarrassing moments with the name, such as an initialism that spells something rude.

Also, while the system wasn’t going to be used by the public, it might still be talked about in front of the public. So, we wanted to check it didn’t sound silly or offensive in Ukrainian, as well as English.

Choosing and communicating the name

With all the due diligence complete, we agreed on Share Homes for Ukraine data. And because we didn’t want it abbreviated to an inaccessible acronym or an initialism, we decided on ‘Share’ as the official short, less formal version.

We told internal stakeholders the new name by email, explaining the process we went through and the rationale behind the final decision. We also explained how to capitalise the name, using sentence case for accessibility.

Our chosen name works because:

it’s future proof for the Homes for Ukraine scheme as it evolves it provides a naming convention we can adapt for other schemes, for example Share [Programme name] data it builds on the brand recognition of Homes for Ukraine Share works in two directions – MHCLG shares data with LAs, and LAs share data with us it doesn’t contain any jargon. We’re using words that our users recognise and understand we avoided an initialism or abstract ‘brand’ name it doesn’t have any unintended meanings, either through its initialism or when translated into Ukrainian

We also think Share sounds warm and humanitarian. This wasn’t among our acceptance criteria at the start, but it was a lovely bonus.

Stakeholder buy-in

The whole process was also fast, taking just a couple of weeks to prepare and run the workshop, synthesise the outputs, and decide on the name.

By taking stakeholders through the naming process with us, we ensured buy-in from key people. The final name was very well-received by all stakeholders.

With clear communication about the name, we avoided something different taking hold informally, before external communications had begun. We love the user-centred, task-focused name of our new system.

Hear more about the work behind Share Homes for Ukraine data 

Want to find out more about the work that went into delivering Share Homes for Ukraine data?  

Members of the Homes for Ukraine Digital team will be speaking at a few events and conferences later this summer. You can catch them at: 

Product for the People on 3 September 2026 

devopsdays London on 17 September 2026 

SDinGov (Service Design in Government, Edinburgh on 23 September 2026 

Read previous blog posts from the Homes for Ukraine Digital team.