Discovering a new government service platform component
My role: Lead user researcher
Team: Product manager, junior user researcher, service designer, technical architect, delivery manager.
Context:
A product team had 10 weeks to identify transformative opportunities in collecting information submitted to government offline. Previous research indicated a strong need within government for a common forms platform.
Brief:
Map the end-to-end experience of processing information that is submitted to government offline. Identify who the users are and their contextual needs.
Outcomes
Senior leadership approval to proceed to the next development phase, based on compelling evidence of user needs.
Creation of design concepts for the product team to pursue in the following phase.
Defined set of hypothesis to test in the initial stages of product development.
Trained a junior user researcher to run her own stream of user research.
Clear and transparent communication across the organisation on what the team was working on.
Process
As a team, we clearly defined the problem area based on previous research.
We generated multiple questions to be investigated by design, tech, product and user research.
I chose methods to help my team learn the end-to-end experience of government case workers collecting information from their users.
I had a team member take notes in each of the 16 interviews I ran to collect a variety of examples of staff processing forms.
I facilitated 6 site visits to observe staff processing forms. During these visits, we picked up on nuances behind standard operating procedures.
I left a week-long diary study with a selection of participants, where they logged issues faced with people and technology. I then used these as materials in team workshops.
I guided the team through creating multiple iterations of an end-to-end experience map.
They worked through the evidence and debated the high-level stages which are common to all form processing.
This process naturally led team members to agreed conclusions, while also embedding the insights gathered in the minds of those responsible for the design process that would follow.
The map acted as a focus for conversations within the team and a storytelling tool when communicating to external stakeholders.
