Fifteen years ago I was sitting in a government meeting with the Heads of Digital [1] from across UK government. We were talking about plans for the forthcoming Gordon Brown vs David Cameron vs Nick Clegg General Election. None of us had any idea what was going to happen. As we sit here in 2024, there’s a chance that we’re about to see a change …
When I was working in the GDS transformation team, one of the questions I got asked often was “why should we spend money and time on user research?”. This case study is the answer I usually gave. I still talk about it today, despite the fact that it dates back to 2014. [With the agreement of all involved, I used the screenshots and details in this …
Of the assessment panel roles, the role of lead assessor for a government service standard assessment is both the most daunting (any difficult questions, everyone looks straight at you) and the least obvious (to be the design assessor, it helps to be a designer; to be a lead assessor, it helps to, um, know a lot about government services). Somewhere back in the mists of …
[Scene: An angry civil servant from a government department confronts me, a civil servant working for GDS.] “It’s ridiculous. The service standard is just an excuse for external organisations to make money out of government. You [pointing at me] should be ashamed of this.” “What’s the problem?” “This is the problem. Every team has to have all of these people in it [brandishes print-out]. You …
It’s easy to rush into changing a service to meet the demands of a post-COVID 19 world in lockdown but it’s worth pausing before making changes. Failing to consider users risks wasting resource by providing a service that won’t be used because it’s not accessible. Even worse, it could mean that we unknowingly increase the isolation or exclusion of our most vulnerable users by introducing …
My manager had asked to talk to me. The conversation we had was one of those conversations that you dream about as a product manager. When I say “dream”, I mean wake up early in the morning wondering what on earth you’ve let yourself in for. She started with “you’re not doing much at the moment are you, Matt?” and then swiftly followed up with …
You are part of a successful multi-disciplinary team working in a user centered and iterative way. A stakeholder – not a user – in the service your team manages gets in touch with feedback. What’s your first reaction? It’s probably to tell them to go away. This reaction may be even more vigorously expressed when the feedback betrays a lack of understanding about how your …
The last couple of times I’ve prepared teams for service standard assessments, I’ve put together a presentation to help explain the process. This has covered the background to the service standard and the main areas that I’ve seen cause confusion or problems. I don’t intend to cover the background here [1] but I thought I’d list the areas that can cause issues, in case that’s …
Prologue A meeting room in a UK government department. Being discussed is the integration of a vendor’s system into the digital service managed by the various people on the other side of the room. A number of questions are raised about the approach to the integration and the user experience of the service once the new flow is included. The head of the vendor team …
Have you ever jumped off – or even out of – something that existed rather higher up that you’d have liked? I once got to climb to the top of a telegraph pole, stand on top of it and then jump to catch a trapeze swing suspended above and a little way away from it. This experience came with two negative aspects. The first of …
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