A product to help staff improve completion rates for the 2021 UK Census.
Highlights
We researched, designed, user tested and implemented the entire product as a Progressive Web App (PWA).
Implementing a third-party chat interface was an interesting idea, which did not make it past the administrative hurdle of ensuring employees' safeguarding.
Remote unmoderated prototype testing was a enjoyable challenge, with the quality of the results not matching the time and energy spent setting them up, in this case.
Challenge
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) needed a knowledge repository for the huge numbers of staff who were to be on-boarded for the 2021 UK national Census.
The staff will be out in the field, so they will need information at their fingertips to help them do their jobs. However, none of these staff will be hired until two years from the date of this project!
Action
I reviewed the documentation from their own discovery phase and developed a research and test plan to fill in the gaps. I paid attention to the potential information architecture of the product, and the experience of ONS staff who work in the field by conducting interviews with ONS field officers.
After all the research had been gathered I arrived at two hypotheses that would be advantageous for ONS to test.
I ran moderated and unmoderated user testing with a fairly elaborate clickable prototype before producing my report.
Output
- Research plan
- Interviews
- User journeys & flows
- Clickable prototype
- User testing
- Report & recommendations
- Agile UX support
Outcome
ONS were able to use our deliverables to produce a public tender for development of the product.
We competed for and won the tender. I was able to work with the development team to bring the solution to life.
During the actual census I asked an ONS officer about the app - they said it was 'great, really helpful!'
