My name’s Matt and I’m the Head of Product Design at FutureGov. For the past few weeks I’ve been working with the Dorsetforyou.com team to help scope the requirements for the new site. Here’s a look at what our team’s been working on over the past four weeks.
At the moment, we’re trying to figure out how the eventual site should look and feel. At the same time, we’re looking at two specific ways in which people interact with Dorsetforyou.com — finding adult social care and council tax — and using them as examples to help inform bigger decisions about how people will interact with the site in future.
All this work starts with “user-centred design,” a term that basically refers to asking people what they want instead of making decisions for them. For example, we’ve spent the past month speaking with different users, from council officers to local organisations and residents who just want a simple way of accessing council services or finding information. We’ve asked them what they want and need from an online platform — what doesn’t work now, and what should work better tomorrow.
Across the board, we’ve already identified some opportunities to improve people’s online and offline experiences. It’s not just about making good online resources — it’s about looking at how we encourage people to use the tools that are out there. For instance, it’s easier for both the council and for users to use direct debit to pay their council tax. However, directing people to the direct debit system could be better. Online there are quite a few pages to navigate through to find the right information, and offline communications like leaflets and letters often put details about how to pay by direct debit in small print on the back. It’s important we map out different user journeys both online and offline so we can spot opportunities to improve access to these types of digital services.
Another part of our user-centred design work over the past few weeks has been generating “personas,” or representative examples of the different people who will use the website. We’ve been strengthening existing personas by gathering real quotes from people and real preferences about how people like to receive information.
Well-developed personas help us better visualise the wants and needs of end users, and then build a website that meets those needs. For example, if we find that users are frustrated about not being able to see how many steps there are in a process, we can then make sure the new site emphasises openness and transparency in how processes work. We’re developing these personas and principles based on what we’ve heard from people in Dorset, but we’re also working with best practices adopted by the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Speaking of GDS, part of our remit is also to look at how we can take the good work being done by central government and adapt it for Dorset’s specific needs. This will be an ongoing challenge for us throughout the project: we need to always balance GDS’s tried-and-tested methods with what people who live and work in Dorset actually want.
We’re only a few weeks into this project so far, but things are definitely moving in the right direction! In the coming weeks, we’ll be finishing a content audit (there are over 7,500 pages on the site!), and prototyping to explore the possibilities for reusing GDS’s website code and some of their approaches. We’ll be providing more updates over the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye on this space and let us know if there’s anything in particular you’d like us to share.
