Contents
Understand user needs. Research to develop a deep knowledge of who the service users are and what that means for the design of the service.
How point 1 improves the service
The needs of the users must be understood so that a service can be built that:
- helps users do the thing they want to do at the first attempt without having to understand government
- is built on their users’ real needs, not their assumptions
How they’ll be assessed
Their assessment and the questions the assessors ask them will vary depending on their service and what it does.
In the discovery assessment
To pass, the service team usually need to:
- show an understanding of who their users are and the problem the service will solve for them
- show they’ve spoken with a representative sample of their users, including those needing assisted digital support
- show they’ve captured user needs through their personas, profiles or user journeys
- show how the user needs can influence policy
- show how the user researcher will ensure compliance with ethics requirements throughout the service team
In the alpha assessment
To pass, the service team usually need to:
- show the user needs found for the service in discovery and how discovery found those needs, including any needs for assisted digital users
- show that they’ve developed stakeholder maps and made connections with groups that will allow interaction with users
- show how the service team has been writing user stories for the service - including for users who need assisted digital support
- show research that identifies parts of the task which users find difficult - the service team will have to explain how they’ve changed the service to make these parts of the task easier for users and how they’ve tested and researched to confirm this
- show any problems that the service team found in research which they’ll have to overcome to design the service
- show how the user researcher will ensure compliance with ethics requirements throughout the service team
- discuss how they received active consent and maintained data protection for users
- show how they have sought and received permission for ethical research if they have included vulnerable participants within their user groups
In the beta assessment
To pass, the service team usually need to:
- talk about the private beta, including how many users they’ve tested with, how they’ve recruited them and received informed and active consent, how they’ve used analytics in their research, and what they’ve learned that they didn’t find in alpha
- compliance with data protection on any identifiable personal information of participants (safe and securely stored information)
- explain who their users are, what they’ve done to understand their needs and what user needs they’ve found, including users who need assisted digital support
- give examples of user stories for their service - for example identify someone who needs to use the service and what they use it for - include assisted digital users
- explain any changes to user needs they’ve identified as a result of researching with users
- discuss the users of their service whose needs are most difficult to meet, and how they’ve been learning about those needs
- talk about the design challenges their users’ needs pose for their service
- talk about the research they’ve done in private beta, i.e. who they did research with, where and when - this should include research with users who need assisted digital support
- give examples of user stories, personas or profiles for their service - i.e. identify people who need to use the service and what they use it for, including users who need assisted digital support
- how the user researcher will ensure compliance with ethics requirements throughout the service team
- discuss how they received active consent and maintained data protection for users
- show how they have sought and received permission for ethical research if they have included vulnerable participants within their user groups
The service team also need to:
- discuss research that identifies parts of the task which users find difficult - they’ll have to explain how they’ve changed the service to make these parts of the task easier for users and how they tested and researched to confirm this
- discuss any problems that they found in research which they’ll have to overcome to design the service
- explain the research they did to understand whether their support model meets user needs and how that research informed iteration and testing
- talk about the research they did in public beta and how they’ll use the results to continuously improve their service, for example who they did research with, how often, when and where - include users who need assisted digital support
- discuss how they received active consent and maintained data protection for users