Getting started with user research workshop recording

The workshop that Lizzie and I delivered went down pretty well, I think. You can find out for yourself by watching it back.

It’s a quick canter through different methods of undertaking user research, aimed at those new to the whole idea. I think user research is a super-important thing for digital teams to get involved with as quickly as possible, because it’s a cultural game changer. If you want to be more user-centric in your work, there’s no better way of doing it than actually speaking to, and understanding, your users.

As well as watching the video, you can:

  1. Download the slides
  2. Read the questions and answers that didn’t get looked at in the workshop
  3. Read the chat notes from the session
  4. Listen to the audio

Lizzie also has some fab stuff that will help you on your user-centred design journey:

Digital age operating models, with Eddie Copeland

One of the elements of the Loosemore definition of digital that doesn’t get as much coverage as the rest is the bit about business, or operating, models. That’s probably because it’s really hard.

So I loved having this chat with LOTI‘s Eddie Copeland about his 6 ideas for future operating models for local public services, which he wrote about a few years ago when he was at Nesta.

I think it is fair to say that this really is just the start of this conversation, but I really hope that folk can take inspiration from what Eddie shares in terms of thinking about how certain services could be completely transformed from the ground up.

As I explained in this post, it isn’t always going to be possible to be truly transformative, and sometimes less ambitious approaches are more suitable. But I think every council needs to have this kind of thinking in their lockers, ready to take the opportunities as they arise.

FREE online workshop: getting started with user research

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

This workshop is free for public sector people. Please use your work email address to make it easy to recognise you!

It’s happening on Thursday 16 December, 12pm on Zoom.

User research is one of the most important stages of any successful digital project. However it often gets missed, and that’s often because people just aren’t used to doing it.

Involving service users in research and testing is a big cultural change for organisations, and takes a fair bit of confidence to start doing for the first time.

In this workshop, Lizzie Bruce from Cake Consultancy joins me to introduce common user research methods, as well as some less well known ones.

We will also talk through how to arrange user research sessions for the first time – where to host them, how to recruit users, how to record sessions and turn them into actionable insights.

At the end of the workshop you will feel more confident about:

  1. Including user research activities as part of your digital project
  2. Choosing the best user research methods to meet your objectives
  3. Setting up your user research sessions, in terms of location, equipment and practicalities
  4. Finding and recruiting users for your research
  5. Turning your research into actionable insights

Don’t delay, book today!


5 videos to help leaders understand digital

Following on from the workshop I ran with LGiU last week on digital for leaders (which went very well, thank you for asking), I shared a few bits with the delegates – further reading, if you will.

Part of that was a set of videos on YouTube that cover some of the important areas that folk in senior positions really need to understand, delivered by people with far greater expertise than me.

Here they are – try and get them in front of your senior leadership team, if you can, and book in a chat with them shortly afterwards to help them apply it to your organisational context!

1. Digital Government: Not Complicated, Just Hard – Tom Loosemore

2. Applying digital to everything – Janet Hughes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy8jgRLej0U

3. Situation Normal, Everything Must Change – Simon Wardley

4. Human-Centered Data Transformation – Kit Collingwood

5. Designing government services that meet user needs – Martin Jordan

Workshop recording: simple service discovery

Here’s the recording of the workshop I ran this morning which looked at using a simple template to find out more about the service we are looking to digital redesign.

We used the example of reporting fly tipping, as well as having a general chat towards the end about how best to engage with service managers when embarking on transformation work.

As well as watching the video, you can:

  1. Download the slides
  2. Find the template on Google Drive
  3. See our fly tipping example
  4. Read the chat notes from the session

If you have any topics you’d like to be covered in a future workshop, just let me know!

NEW: the SensibleTech link library

Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash

Back in 2017, Paul Maltby co-curated a list of reading for policy wonks interested in finding out more about digital. There’s loads of great stuff in there which have stood the test of time.

I’ve always liked the idea of bringing together in one place all the great stuff that has been shared over the years in blog posts and articles, so people don’t need to answer these problems themselves, over and over again.

So, I’ve started my own library of evergreen, ever-helpful links. What’s more, in the interests of preservation, I’ve also stored my own PDF copy of each article, just in case they disappear from the web, for whatever reason.

Each link has a title and a description, tells you who wrote it, and provides a link to the orifginal, plus to the PDF copy in case you need it. I would always encourage folk to read the originals if you can, so you see them in context and so the author knows their stuff is being read.

Each link is also tagged, so you can easily find other links on related topics, or other content across the SensibleTech site that likewise is along similar lines.

For those that want to keep up to date with additions to the library, there is a trusty RSS feed. I might build out an email alert system at some point, if people would be interested in that.

I’ve also added a form so you can suggest links to be added – it would be so helpful if you do.

Hopefully this is a useful thing – do have a browse and let me know your thoughts!

Huge thanks to Steph Gray for his help making this work. I managed to do some clever stuff with custom post types and fields, but needed his magic to make it all look pretty and functional on the front end!

FREE online workshop: quick and easy service discovery

Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

Following on from my last workshop on the matching user needs to technology capabilities process, here’s the next one, this time talking through service discovery, based on the ideas and template shared in this blog post. The workshop will be free and for public sector people only.

The workshop will run on Zoom on Wednesday, October 27 at 11am. I anticipate it will last around 45 minutes, but keep an hour free just in case.

At the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

  • use the process to identify services that are ripe for digital transformation
  • engage service owners in a conversation about how their services can be redesigned
  • begin to think about a service’s user needs
  • identify early technology opportunities within a service
  • document all of this in a nice template, courtesy of me

The running order is as follows:

  • Intros
  • Quick bit of background about when this process can be used and what for
  • Running through an example, using the template live
  • Discussion and questions about taking it forward in practice

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? So what are you waiting for?

If it is any consolation for those that can’t make it, I will be sharing a recording here on SensibleTech 😀

Workshop recording: matching user needs with technology capabilities

Here’s the recording of the workshop I ran earlier today on using a process and template to help match user needs to technology capabilities. We worked through the example of an intranet and there was lots of interesting discussions as everyone chipped in through the session.

🖥️ View and download the slides

📄 View and download the template

I think this way of running short, focused online sessions works pretty well, and I will definitely be doing more in the future!

Why leaders need to understand digital – and what they really need to know

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Folk in all sectors are being constantly bombarded with instructions to digitally transform their organisations, or calls to digitise services, and to make use of the cloud.

With all these meaningless exhortations, it’s easiest just to ignore them. After all, isn’t this the sort of thing that our IT departments are hired to worry about on our behalf? It’s just computers and software, and dealing with technology is just operational detail!

Well… no, not really. It’s actually absolutely vital that those in leadership positions in councils, whether they be politicians or officers, understand the potential and the pitfalls of embarking on a large-scale digital change programme.

Technology for technology’s sake can lead organisations down the wrong path very easily. That is what makes it so important that leaders provide a vision and understand how that vision is enabled by digital and IT. It’s too important to be left to the technologists!

Digital is fundamentally not just about taking services and putting them online – a classic case of doing the wrong thing righter. Digital is also not guaranteed to save you money. It can save money – but only when it is done well, and that users are happy to take up your new digital services.

Good digital transformation happens when leaders grasp three strategic principles:

Firstly, that digital transformation is in response to people’s raised expectations. Those expectations have been raised by almost everything that has happened to the organisations they interact with, no matter what the sector, in the last decade or so.

People can now open bank accounts on their phones, without needing to speak to a human being or use a pen at any stage. They can set up limited companies in the same way, and tax their cars. Their shopping is done online, they watch television via the internet and they communicate with friends, family and colleagues using voice, text and video on a bewildering variety of apps.

And yet, when it comes to their local council, they still need to download PDF forms, print them out, fill them in and post them back. It still takes days or weeks to get decisions or responses. And all of this is true for the staff working in councils, too. They get as fed up with all the printing, scanning, copying, rekeying and general inefficiency as anyone else.

We have seen the pace at which councils can embrace digital workflows through the pandemic, and that has given both staff and citizens more than a glimpse of what could be.

Meeting these raised expectations is key to the success of digital transformation. You have to meet the needs of your users first. If everything you do in digital is to save money, you will likely end up with digital services that nobody wants to use, and that will result in failure and more expense. Instead, put the user front and centre, design around them, and the organisational benefits will surely follow.

Second, one of the key changes that taking a truly digital approach will make in your organisation is cultural. An organisation cannot succeed in digital transformation with the same culture it has always had. What does this look like?

The culture of the internet age is open. It rewards those that share and collaborate. Think about Wikipedia – an entire encyclopedia written by people giving up their knowledge and time for free. It’s a remarkable achievement, and yet we barely even think about it these days. Likewise, almost the entire internet is built upon software that has been shared openly, often for no cost, with volunteers of all descriptions contributing to fixing bugs and adding functionality. Modern organisations need to operate in similar ways.

The culture is also agile – by which I do not mean hotdesking, or working from home. Agile is a way of delivering work, by focusing on getting products in a usable state as quickly as possible, letting users loose upon it, and then iterating based on feedback. It focuses on starting small and growing from there, and by reducing risk by failing – if you must fail – early, and cheaply. This is in contrast to traditional approaches to technology projects, that see long specifications drawn up, teams disappearing for months or years to implement them, only to re-emerge into a world that has moved on, or one that doesn’t like their interpretation of those requirements.

These are just two examples of digital culture. There are many more, and when put into effect they create happy, well functioning working environments.

Third, that whilst digital can apply to new technology, the real impact is being seen in operating models. AirBnB is a global hotel chain with no hotels. Uber is a worldwide taxi service that owns no cars. Facebook, the world’s most popular media entity, creates no content. This sounds strange, and yet it is true.

This is because these companies have been designed for the internet age. The way they deliver their products and services is predicated on the existence of the internet, and the fact that the vast majority of people can access it pretty much anywhere, and anywhen. Technology enables this, but the genius lies in the way the companies adapt the way they work to fit the new world that the technology has helped to create. After all, Netflix didn’t beat Blockbuster because they had a nicer website – they won because their operating model suited a world where people didn’t need to drive to a shop to rent something to watch.

So what would your services look like if they were designed from scratch, today, by people taking as a foundation that the internet exists? Imbue that vision with the public service ethos to ensure the most vulnerable are still catered for, and you have a plan for really transformative digital work.

Summing up

The really important bits about digital then are not about technology at all, but instead about focusing on people’s needs and expectations, changing your culture, and redesigning your operating models. Digital can deliver savings, but not if that is the overriding consideration above all others, and not if the work is considered an IT project.

Aspirations, culture and operating model design are led from the top – and that’s where you come in.

FREE online workshop: Matching user needs with tech capabilities

A while ago I shared a post with a template showing how you can take a capability-based approach to picking technology by focusing on user needs.

There has been a fair bit of interest in it since it was published, so I thought it might be useful to run a short online workshop running through how it works with a smallish group of people. As I have at this stage no real idea what I am doing, it will be free for public sector people.

Book your place now!

The workshop will run on Zoom on Wednesday, September 15 at 11am. I anticipate it will last around 45 minutes, but keep an hour free just in case.

At the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

  • Understand the benefits of approaching technology decision making through capabilities
  • Understand the core ideas around user needs and how they should impact technology choices
  • Confidently run your own workshops following the process in your own work
  • Come up with loads of ways to improve the whole thing!

The running order is as follows:

  • Quick intro to the session and what we will cover
  • Everyone says hi (and I’ll probably ask a silly question about your favourite something or other)
  • I’ll run through the idea behind the process and template and what it is meant to achieve
  • We will work through the example of the intranet as used in the blog post
  • We will then work through an example or two that people on the session suggest – hopefully real scenarios they are currently dealing with

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? So what are you waiting for? Book your place now!