We are pleased to be able to share our new Design Principles with you. Our team got excited when we first read them through a few weeks ago because we know they’ll help us work smarter with our users and with council services.
Now they have been signed off by the Project Board you can all take a look:
These eight principles will guide the digital team every time we work with services to add any new content to the website – from a page or an e-form, to a whole section or customer journey.
These reflect local business and user needs as well as best practice from the Government Digital Service Design Principles.
Dorsetforyou Design Principles
1.Start with needs – user needs not council needs
Use data to inform everything we do. Can we prove users need these webpages? Have we asked them?
2. Do less
Keep it simple, if the information is out there on another website link users to it – we don’t need a special Dorset version of everything.
3. Let your content reflect our brand vision
Choose every sentence, every image and every page with care and make it work as hard as possible.
4. Design with data and iterate
Use all the information at our fingertips to keep improving our digital services. Polishing each one until all the sticking points disappear and every transaction runs smoothly.
5. Do the hard work to make it simple
To me, this is about not settling for ‘good enough’. Invest the time and resources to write and build excellent online services.
6. For everyone
Whether they use our website from their phone, a PC or a tablet, we need to get it right first time for all our users. Accessibility and usability go hand in hand.
7. Build digital services, not websites
This goes back to the focus on user needs. Building websites is fun but our citizens need a quick and easy way to buy a parking permit or renew their library books so they can get on with their day.
8. Content for citizens, not customers
Stick to providing a service to citizens, everything else is a distraction. We recognise that some services, like country parks and leisure centres have different needs, so the Futuregov team is drawing up a parallel set of design principles we can use to help ‘trading’ council services have a strong, competitive digital presence.
What do you think? Are you a citizen? Or a customer? What do you need from your council website? If you work for, or with, one of our partners will you be able to apply these principles in your service? to your digital transactions with citizens? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Hi Laura
Really welcome these principles. Particularly pleased to see no. 8 recognise the different needs of ‘traded’ services, although I would say we would design for both citizens and customers (we are all both, including staff and councillors). I look forward to seeing these parallel principles. We need to remember that commercial services will be able to look elsewhere if what is offered doesn’t meet their expectations.
I particular like this:
“we don’t need a special Dorset version of everything”
So true for all councils – hopefully Dorset can set a template for others to follow, as I know is the aspiration.
Now these have been developed does it mean that a website is being designed on these principles?
Hi Michael – yes these will be our starting point for all new digital content from now on, including the new website.
I really like this:
‘Can we prove users need these webpages? Have we asked them?’
The have we asked them bit is so important. I believe that taking the time to do consultation and user testing at the start will really pay off in the long run.
Point 8 – content for citizens not customers. I agree with MCH, we’re both aren’t we? But personally I would like to see a removal of commercial advertising on D4U. I think it cheapens the site.
Keep up the good work guys! Exciting times ahead! 🙂
Hello Laura
This is all good stuff which focuses the mind and gives everyone the same song-sheet to work from. We should keep these design principles high profile all the time so we don’t lose sight of them.
“Do the hard work to make it simple”. This is a great idea which means that all editors need to be trained to a very high standard to make this a continuing and realistic goal. It should also mean that there will be real job satisfaction for those editors.
“Can we prove users need these web pages?” Can we check this in the current analytics and use this as a quick win and reasonable argument to automatically remove anything that is used rarely or not at all?
“Content for citizens not customers”. Does that mean we should be focusing solely on residents’ needs rather than considering visitors to the area? We seem to try and be all things to all people at the moment.
I’m with Cassie on the commercial advertising. Dorsetforyou is a visually busy site and personally I find it a distraction. Given the nature of some of the ad content, people may get confused and think that it’s services the council offer rather than third party information. Is it really that worthwhile financially?
We’re very lucky to be able to go back to the drawing board and re-create a new platform using the experience we have had over the last few years with our current website. It’s a genuine opportunity for everyone who uses Dorsetforyou to make their contribution at the outset thus giving them ownership of this shared website – shared by ourselves and our citizens/customers/residents!
These are all great points Gillian. The needs of citizens vs. customers is key, luckily we have a good working relationship with Visit-Dorset.com who provide information for visitors as well as local residents.
The commercial advertising is an ongoing experiment to find out just how worthwhile it is and we have had lots of feedback about it. Interestingly Futuregov found in their conversations with users that residents themselves don’t mind it – so the jury’s still out…
Hi Laura, you mentioned the new website.
Is there a programme/schedule for us all to review all our service content on d4u in time for the new website- or will existing pages/info migrate and be reviewed in due course? It would be useful to know if we have to schedule this in as a group of colleagues across Dorset will need to work on and agree our pages
Hi Chris
This is something we are factoring into our planning. The first two content areas being worked on are Revenues & Benefits and Adult Social Care. The project team have not yet finalised the order in which we will migrate all services’ web content. Once we have this agreed we will be able to share it with colleagues and work with you to ensure your content is focussed on user needs and written in line with our Design Principles.
I’m trying to get in touch with the DigitalFirst team for dorsetforyou.com.
Hi. Our contact details are digitalteam@dorset.gov.uk or call 01305 252353.