Detailed case study
Redesign of the Primary Authority Register website
Background
This was a GDS project relaunching the Primary Authority Register website – a resource tool to facilitate the partnership between a business and a local authority. The existing site suffered both usability and data efficiency issues.
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In addition:
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The current register was not compliant with the Government Digital Service’s, Digital By Default Service Standard
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Changes to Primary Authority from 01/10/2017, could not be supported by the current system
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The current register was based on proprietary software that was not compliant with the standard
The Team
I was the sole UX practitioner, working as part of a 20+ multidisciplinary Agile team, including many civil servants, based in Westminster and Birmingham. I was working directly with design consultancy Transform (now Engine), based in Gt Portland Street, who I’ve worked with for over 10 years, on a variety of projects across all sectors.
The Transform team:
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Delivery Manager
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Business Analyst
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UX Designer (me)
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User Researcher
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Full Stack Developer
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Technical Architect
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Data Architect
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Dev Ops
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Content Strategist
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Copywriter
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Graphic Designer
Although the majority of the client team were based in Westminster, it was important from day one to involve those who worked in their Birmingham office. In addition to individual visits back and forth during the project, we alternated the fortnightly full-team ‘show n tells’ between the two venues. These were very well attended.
Core activities
My remit spanned 3 GDS stages:
DISCOVERY
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Supporting the researcher with 1-2-1 user interviews and contributing to co-creation workshops
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Creating a set of UX principles to inform a clear user-led experience strategy
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Creating initial conceptual ideas
DEFINE (ALPHA)
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Developing user journeys for ‘Find a Partnership’ and ‘Registration’
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Developing wireframes and interactive prototypes for these core journeys
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Creating test protocols for each user Observing user testing and rapidly iterating any feedback
DESIGN (BETA)
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Developing wireframes and interactive prototypes for the remaining journeys
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Creating test protocols for each user Observing user testing and rapidly iterating any feedback
Throughout the 12-month engagement I was also responsible for:
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Briefing other disciplines within the team
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Making regular presentations to senior stakeholders
Discovery tasks
User interviews...
38 interviews, telephone and face-to-face were divided between myself and a researcher. These were designed to explore existing users current experience of the site and potential users needs.
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Key challenges:
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Unable to offer incentives to interviewees
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Many were cancelled at short notice or the candidate failed to show
Solution:
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Extend the interview timeframe in order to get the required number of users
Working closely with the researcher to process the results of the interviews
Co-creation workshops...
We ran a series of workshops, each tailored to a specific user group, to explore and validate the issues we had discovered during the 1-2-1 interviews.
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Key challenges:
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Getting all the required attendees in the same room at the same time
Solution:
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We gate-crashed other meetings and presentations (even an awards ceremony) to engage with our users
UX principles...
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From the research and personas (developed by our researcher), I distilled a set of UX principles that would inform a clear user-led experience strategy.
These proved invaluable within the government environment to:
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Educate senior stakeholders on what we were trying to achieve
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Keep the whole team focussed on the experience goal
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Deflect any unconsidered or inappropriate ‘ideas’
First draft of UX Principles
Alpha & Beta tasks
The Alpha and Beta phases were essentially the busiest points for me, translating the research work done in Discovery into user journeys, and creating interactive prototypes that could be tested on end users
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User journeys...
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Alpha tasks and journeys – ‘Find a partnership’ and ‘Registration’
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Beta tasks and journeys – everything else!
‘Find a partnership’ was a straightforward, but important, findability-based task aimed at Enforcement Officers who needed to quickly identify if a business was in a Primary Authority partnership, and what ‘assured advice’ they had been given by that authority
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Key challenges:
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User feedback had focussed on ‘search’ - but it was actually the poor browse performance – that was driving them to the search box
Solution:
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While the dev team looked into the search functionality, I focussed on improving the browse journey, utilising some best practice principles I’d utilised in retail applications (sort by, filter, slice’n’dice etc)
Wireframes of simplified browse – offering easy filtering
User testing
Towards the end of both phases we conducted user testing, on both desktop and mobile interfaces, in a dedicated test lab.
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To support the test facilitator, I created a series of test scripts – one for each user type. They gave contextual background and helped focus each test session on the areas I needed validating. The prototypes were tested internal on the project team before being put in front of end users. The speed of Axure allowed me to quickly iterate any problem areas users found and then instantly retest.
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Key challenges:
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As with the user research, the inability to incentivise test users resulted in a persistently poor attendance of candidates
Solution:
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We extended the testing timeframe to reach our test quota
Testing on mobile. Members of the client team were encouraged to attend these sessions or observe them remotely.
Outcomes
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UX delivered on time
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MVP launched on time
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Dev team continued to work on remaining feature
“The Transform team are the most professional team and due to their dedication have delivered against very aggressive timelines.”
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- Paul Turner, Finance Director
Existing site
New site
Link to new GDS site