We’ve been on a hell of a discovery…
From Coronation Street to Dancing on Ice, how our internal technology teams have put people, empathy and research at the heart of what they do
This year, we set out to change our usual roadmap and budget setting process within our Group Technology function at ITV. We decided to experiment with service design and digital development techniques. These are already familiar for teams delivering external products at ITV, but we wanted to apply them to improve how we deliver internal services for our staff at ITV. This is our story:
Our Group Technology function is an internal team supporting our 6,500 colleagues at ITV with their Workplace Technology. From the devices they use, to the networks they connect to, our teams support colleagues with the technology they need to do their jobs.
In August last year, while starting the annual planning cycle, a quiet voice in the room asked: “well what do your users want?” Silence. Did we know? Had we listened? Did it matter?
We need to put our customers (both internal as well as external) at the heart of what we do. So we challenged ourselves — how do we take a similar approach to the one we use for external customers and apply it internally? How can we prioritise what we work on based on user need? And why is it so important?
“It doesn’t matter, it’s just an internal system”
It can be a difficult case to make. Why worry about internal systems when you could be investing elsewhere? We decided that yes it mattered. It mattered a lot. If we could put ourselves in the shoes of our users and understand exactly how they work, then we could design ways of working that work for them. There’s many specialist skilled roles at ITV — if we design slick internal processes, it will allow users to maximise their skills rather than waste time with complicated technology.
Back to basics.
We decided to shift our focus from what we thought needed fixing, and take time to listen and engage with our users. We wanted to find out what was working, what wasn’t and what could be improved.
We used 4 key research techniques to learn about our users
Guerilla research: Across our main office sites we camped out in our canteens or coffee areas doing quick interviews with colleagues as they grabbed a drink or took a break (some chocolate bribery was involved!).
We were flexible — some chats lasted 5 minutes and some 30 minutes, but they were really useful allowing us to hear thoughts on what colleagues used technology for, and most importantly, why.
Workshops: We held a number of workshops with key stakeholders and some of their teams, delving into their roles, daily tasks and what they were trying to achieve, helping us understand any pain points as well as helping imagine and design a workplace of the future.
1:1 Interviews: Interviewing those more closely responsible for delivering technology helped us understand limitations and frustrations from a technical point of view. It informed decision making later in the project when it came to determining the organisational capability and capacity to design and deliver solutions.
Total immersion and observation: We put ourselves in the roles of our production users. We visited a number of our productions for 1–2 days each observing their use of technology. In total we spoke to over 350 colleagues across all areas of ITV some of these included:
- Coronation Street and Emmerdale. We witnessed parts of the pre- and post-production process, the work of the crewing teams, the schedulers, locations teams to name just a few. We observed the filming and shooting process, as well as understanding how our costume and makeup teams work.
- Our Daytime studios where Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women are filmed live so we understood the immediacy of live TV.
- The Voice, Come Dine with Me, and Dancing On Ice which are filmed at non-ITV locations
- ITV Sports observing the prep and filming of one of the Six Nations post-match shows.
- Third-party studios we rent for shows such as Love Island Aftersun.
- Regional newsroom visits to Bristol, Cardiff and Manchester.
- We even spent a morning in one of our on-screen journalist’s home in Taunton to understand what the experience of a remote worker is.
What did we learn?
A huge amount. It would be impossible to summarise all the research but here’s some highlights:
Our colleagues told us that they liked:
- Our Google suite platform which allowed them to work more flexibly and access information wherever they were working.
- Talentpay — one of the first products built in house using agile development.
Some of the areas for improvement:
- Our onboarding process needs to be quicker, less repetitive and more intuitive.
- How we train our colleagues on the systems and tools available to them
- Our phone offering — Colleagues felt glued to their desk* due to their phone set up
*research conducted pre-COVID-19.
We’ve taken forward all the research insights and developed a detailed blueprint and future vision for the technology we offer at ITV which we will continue to test with users.
We might not deliver or do everything. Some initiatives require a large investment and may take longer to deliver. Others could be quick wins, implemented easily that have a big impact, but we have a clear direction and we’re committing to sharing this openly with our ITV colleagues.
Some improvements we’ve started:
We’ve introduced tech tips twice a week,we share a simple tip via email with a demonstration GIF, for example: how to schedule the time you send your emails or how to create an E-signature. We’ve had great feedback and plan to continue them.
Our plans to develop our own system that automates the creation of a new user account and takes the process from 2 days down to 30 seconds in response to the feedback on the onboarding process have been accelerated. This is a longer-term project but we hope to deliver value to ITV quicker.
In summary:
When our roadmap and the budget setting process starts again this year, we’re committed to putting people, empathy and research at the heart of any decisions. Our initiatives will be validated with users and prioritised on value. We’ll work openly with our stakeholders and business so that together we can improve end to end experiences.
There’s lots more to do, and we’ll continue to tell the story openly via our blogs.
