Service @lexij @tillwirth Thursday, 13 February 14 We’re going to talk about why we’re using user needs for transition, and more broadly for GOV.UK, and show you how we write them.
February 14 GDS design principle #1 - Start with needs. There are a few reason why this is a good idea… - people have a need of government as a whole, not of specific departments. Focussing on what the user needs to do helps us to see through the silos of government organisation, and to present information in a joined-up way - people come to government to get something done. Whether that’s to find a piece of information they need, to apply for a driving licence, or to pay their taxes. They don’t come to read things for fun. So the quicker, clearer and simpler we can meet their need, the better. - It’s the need the user has of government, *not* the need government has to impart information to the user. For transition, taking a ‘user-needs first’ approach is helping us and agencies to make sure that we’re creating and transitioning content that works for our users, rather than being a wholesale cut and paste of existing websites. So let’s look at a user need...
that <I achieve some benefit> GDS Alex Jackson & Till Wirth Thursday, 13 February 14 This is the template for a user need. It starts with the user. The user needs to do something, say, apply for a licence, or find a piece of information. The outcome of that thing - why the user needs to do something - is captured next. To show you a real example:
find out when the next Bank Holiday is So that I can plan my holiday GDS Alex Jackson & Till Wirth Thursday, 13 February 14 Dates of bank holidays are something that government sets, and we know it’s a popular search term for people who come to GOV.UK
14 For transition, we’ve been collecting data about users of websites that we’re transitioning. We categorise it - with the agency - so we can understand what users are doing on transitioning sites. We also look at search terms so we can see how people are finding content. We also try to get hold of contact centre data or on-page feedback. This is what we use during the user needs workshops. Here’s an example of a user need we produced for UKBA.
student I need to apply for a student visa So that I can study in the UK Thursday, 13 February 14 This isn’t in itself enough for us to be able to decide how to meet the need. So we also write ‘acceptance criteria’, so we can measure whether we’ve met the need. For this - student visas - the acceptance criteria look like...
are eligible - knows how to apply - knows how long it takes to get a visa - knows how much it costs - knows what happens after they’ve submitted the application GDS Alex Jackson & Till Wirth Thursday, 13 February 14 We use acceptance criteria as a checklist for content designers when they’re writing the content They’re usually things that the user needs before they can complete their task. So, for someone wanting to apply for a student visa, the user will need to know *read out above* This isn’t quite all the acceptance criteria for this particular need - can you suggest some more? So now we’ve hopefully managed to explain what a user need is…
14 This is the current Environment Agency page on disposing of lightbulbs. It’s one of the top results in google (and usually the first government result) for terms like ‘dispose of lightbulb’ and ‘recycle lightbulb’
14 What happens to these agency user needs once we’ve written them all? This slide’s a very small selection of UKBA needs. As you can imagine, we’re collecting quite a few. Our content designers work with transition managers to decide whether they’re mainstream or specialist needs. If they’re mainstream, GDS content designers will write content that meets the need. If they’re specialist, the agency will do that work. We look at the user needs as a whole to work out the best way to meet those needs on GOV.UK - whether it’s a guide, or a smart answer, or a quick answer, or a format we don’t yet have. We use the data we’ve based them on to help us check that we are meeting genuine user needs, and to help us prioritise. We can’t expect every last piece of specialist content to be rewritten for transition, so we prioritise by using the data to help us find a sensible cut-off point.
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