Design, build, test.. then repeat
When it comes to new digital services we’re not just thinking about technology. We’re completely rethinking the way we design services so they meet the needs of our residents.
We are starting to build services in an agile way, which basically means we can build quickly, test what we’ve built and make changes based on regular feedback.
Using this approach we can put our residents — the people we are designing services for — at the centre of our work. There is no point in us designing services for what we think our residents need. If we want you to use our online services and most importantly choose to use them, we need to find out what those needs are and build services around them.
By building quickly and regularly testing our ideas we can find out what works and what doesn’t before we’ve invested in technology. If users don’t understand something, we can change it. This is why we start with paper and pen and gradually work our way up to a digital solution using paper and online prototypes.
The Government Digital Service sums up agile service design nicely, including the phases we work through to get a new service live. In brief the process follows four steps:
- Discovery phase — finding out what the users need, what to measure and what the constraints are
- Alpha phase — building a prototype, testing it with users and learning from it
- Beta phase — scaling up and going public
- Live — learning how to continually improve the live service
Join us on our digital journey
Key to each step of the process is sharing what we have done, not only within the team and with the wider council, but with the communities we serve. Sharing information is how we learn and improve the work we are doing.
We want our residents to help us to do this. We are building a database of users that we can invite to test our new digital services as we develop them.
It doesn’t matter whether you are an online expert or a complete beginner, we would really like to hear from you.
Simply fill in our short online form and we will be in touch when we have some ideas to test.
