{"id":259,"date":"2017-01-16T14:38:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T14:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.dorsetforyou.gov.uk\/digital-first\/?p=259"},"modified":"2017-01-16T14:51:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T14:51:46","slug":"do-you-call-it-a-tip-or-a-dump-a-recycling-centre-or-recycling-village-answers-on-a-postcard-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/2017\/01\/16\/do-you-call-it-a-tip-or-a-dump-a-recycling-centre-or-recycling-village-answers-on-a-postcard-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you call it a tip or a dump? A recycling centre or recycling village?&#8230;..answers on a postcard please"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve been quiet for a while but for good reasons. The fully staffed project team is now in place and we are busy beavering away redesigning our online content while keeping in mind our <a href=\"https:\/\/news.dorsetforyou.gov.uk\/digital-first\/2015\/09\/15\/our-design-principles-start-with-user-needs\/\">design principles<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of my assigned priority redesign areas is the waste and recycling website and questions like the above have caused a lot of great debates as I begin my journey to improve the website based on what our customers need and want.<\/p>\n<p>Let me just quickly dive into a little bit of background about the waste and recycling website. In the last year the site has had 1,426,639 visits, this contributes to roughly 6%\u00a0\u00a0of our traffic to Dorsetforyou.com as a whole. Now considering we represent seven different councils, for one service \u00a0that is quite impressive, right? It holds everything you need to know about your waste and recycling service in Dorset, from when is my bin going to be collected? to what exactly happens to my waste?<\/p>\n<p>Staring at my blank sheet of paper (obviously metaphorically speaking!) I needed to know where to start: what works and what doesn\u2019t on our website at the moment? How do people use our website? With these questions in mind I decided to run some quick user testing modules online with members of the public. I asked for both male and female testers across many different age demographics and my results gave me a clear idea of the areas that I needed to concentrate on. I based these modules on five tasks that my data (phone call statistics, Google Analytics, online transactions) told me were the most popular, these were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Find out when your bin collection day is<\/li>\n<li>Download your bin collection calendar<\/li>\n<li>Report that your bin was missed<\/li>\n<li>Report that your bin is broken<\/li>\n<li>Apply for the garden waste collection service<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although this testing was valuable I have learnt a few things along the way. As my five tasks were all about the same topic my testers became rather familiar with the site which made me think, is this an accurate measurement of how our customers are using the website? Would they really complete all of these tasks so quickly if they hadn\u2019t just been on the site? I decided the next time I run these modules I would run them across different areas of the website, for example housing, parking and waste, as this might give me a more accurate view of how our customers behave online.<\/p>\n<p>After weeks of testing, redesigning, more testing\u2026more redesigning!\u2026 I decided I would venture out and visit a few libraries and chat to real people! (or even better actual Dorset residents!) and show them my designs. To hear feedback such as \u201cThat was so much easier\u201d to \u201cIf someone my age can do it then anyone can!\u201d I was happy. I felt confident that the fresh new look I had created was a success and a hit with the public! I have even seen feedback trickle in over the Christmas period commenting on how it easy it was to find their Christmas bin collection dates, which is just brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>Now I need to take a moment to share the love a bit, this was by far not a solo act. I worked closely with the Dorset Waste Partnership team at Dorset County Council for weeks, to be honest I became a part of the furniture! A combination of their knowledge about anything and everything \u00a0there was to know about waste and recycling (and trust me I have learnt a lot!) and my digital \u201cknow how\u201d we made a pretty good pairing and as a result I am pleased to say this was a success.<\/p>\n<p>My last leg of the journey is to redesign the recycling specific pages which includes how you can reduce or reuse your waste \u2013 on that note I am now off to do some reducing of my own after seeing how many toys my daughter has received over Christmas! I think a trip to the charity shop for a bit of out with the old and in with the new is in order!<\/p>\n<p>You can find my redesigned pages here &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk\/recycling-rubbish-and-waste\">https:\/\/www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk\/recycling-rubbish-and-waste<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oh and in case you were wondering, we are calling them recycling centres although recycling village does sound like my household rubbish would have a lovely vacation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve been quiet for a while but for good reasons. The fully staffed project team is now in place and we are busy beavering away redesigning our online content while keeping in mind our design principles. One of my assigned priority redesign areas is the waste and recycling website and questions like the above have&hellip; <span class=\"kuorinka-read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/2017\/01\/16\/do-you-call-it-a-tip-or-a-dump-a-recycling-centre-or-recycling-village-answers-on-a-postcard-please\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Do you call it a tip or a dump? A recycling centre or recycling village?&#8230;..answers on a postcard please<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4,6,5],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}