Fast-track content design for coronavirus
The challenge
We want to give disabled people and their families the information and advice they need to support them during the coronavirus pandemic. We want to get this content online quickly. But we don’t want to compromise our principles of providing content that is user-centred, accessible and accurate. This is how we are meeting the challenge.
Evidence from disabled people
Our content development cycle usually starts with focus groups and depth interviews, followed by a survey to validate the insights from the qualitative research.
For coronavirus, the lead time for this programme of research would have delayed our response to an urgent situation. So instead we use data from our helpline, our online community and other Scope services to find out what people are asking for help with. We check in regularly. The data changes frequently and new user needs are emerging.
In parallel with this, our Insight team used an accessible chatbot over Easter to gather insights from the Scope research panel. They supplemented this with phone interviews with panellists. Many of the insights from this activity further evidenced the user stories we had already identified from helpline enquiries. And we’re using this new data to refine the content we’re planning, and to make sure we capture any new user needs.
We use evidence to write user stories and build a backlog of user needs.
Priorities
We also analyse enquiry volumes to work out which subject areas we should tackle first. This means we can give each piece of content a consistent priority level. For example, our top 3 content categories, based on enquiry percentages are:
1 Food and essentials 26%
2 Benefits 22%
3 Cerebral Palsy 13%
Facts change
It’s hard to stay on top of the constantly changing information coming from government and other sources.
Our policy team supports us by analysing and distilling changes to legislation and government policy so that we can update our existing information and advice and revise new content. We are also kept informed by our helpline staff, and by scanning news and media.
We keep a backlog of fact changes and work through it every day to see where content needs to be changed. For content designers with a passion for delivering accurate, complete information there can be a psychological impact when nothing stays accurate or complete for long. Our new page on food and essentials during coronavirus is now on its 25th revision!
Process
We use Kanban to manage our ‘regular’ content production workflow. We were already using a Trello board to make this visible to the whole team. Several of us (now all of us!) work from home.
For our coronavirus response we needed to change the workflow so that we could deliver accurate, evidence-based content to people more quickly.
As a team, we designed a fast-track workflow to do this. We made it visible on a new Trello board that’s used for all coronavirus work. Two weeks in, we had a team retrospective to figure out what could be improved, and we continue to make improvements as we go.
Our ‘regular’ workflow is:
1 research and planning
2 writing
3 second eye
4 review meeting (‘crit’)
5 user testing
6 iteration
7 PUBLICATION
Our ‘coronavirus’ workflow is:
1 research and planning
2 writing
3 second eye
4 fact check
5 PUBLICATION
6 user testing
7 iteration
The new workflow is quicker
Publication takes place earlier in the process. We iterate the live content following testing to improve usability.
We’ve replaced the ‘crit’ meeting with a fact check by email. Our subject experts for this content are usually within our services and respond quickly.
Testing
Usually, we test new content before we publish it. We decided to test new coronavirus content after publication so that we could make it live more quickly.
This approach also means we can combine test data from multiple sources:
· depth interviews about the written content
· Hotjar heat maps
· on-page survey feedback
· Google Analytics
We also check whether people can find the content they need within the information architecture.
As well as testing the written content on the page, we can check the usability of features like warning boxes and related content promotion. For some people, the appearance of the ‘was this page helpful?’ banner signalled the end of the page and they didn’t scroll beyond this.
All this evidence helps the content designers iterate and improve the content.
Results
The metrics for the new coronavirus content are encouraging. The volume of data is low because the new pages have only been live for a short time. But the data suggest that the coronavirus content is needed and that its quality has been maintained.
Since 26 March 2020:
· 18 new pages published
· 24 existing pages updated
New coronavirus pages accounted for over 20% of unique pageviews for all support and advice content on the website.
The percentage ratings ‘helpful’ for new coronavirus content from the on-page survey is the same as the average for all support and advice pages (74%).
