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Sarah_Richards_USER_IS_KING_OR_QUEEN_IT-tinget_2014
- 1. The user is King (and Queen)
- 3. Users… they are everywhere
- 6. People
- 9. 1. Create GDS 2. Fix publishing 3. Fix transactions 4. Go wholesale
- 10. Create GDS
- 12. Fix publishing
- 13. The problem with publishing
- 14. “What’s the government’s policy on Afghanistan?” Sarah Richards @escmum
- 15. Foreign Office
- 16. British Embassy in Kabul
- 18. Department for International Development
- 19. Number 10
- 21. Home Office
- 22. Cabinet Office
- 23. Deputy PM
- 24. “I don’t know what the government’s policy is on Afghanistan” Sarah Richards @escmum
- 25. Fix publishing
- 26. The process Sarah Richards
- 27. Sarah Richards
- 28. Sarah Richards
- 29. Sarah Richards
- 30. Sarah Richards
- 31. Content design team Sarah Richards
- 32. Sarah Richards
- 33. Sarah Richards
- 34. Sarah Richards
- 35. Sarah Richards
- 36. Sarah Richards
- 37. Sarah Richards
- 38. Sarah Richards
- 40. simpler Sarah Richards @escmum
- 43. Government should only do what only government can do Sarah Richards @escmum
- 49. Content cull Sarah Richards @escmum
- 50. As a… I want to… So that…. Sarah Richards @escmum
- 51. As a daughter I want to find out how I can get an LPA So that I can take care of my sick mother’s affairs Sarah Richards @escmum
- 54. clearer Sarah Richards @escmum
- 58. Sarah Richards
- 59. Sarah Richards
- 60. Sarah Richards
- 61. Sarah Richards
- 62. Sarah Richards
- 64. Sarah Richards
- 65. Sarah Richards
- 66. Sarah Richards faster @escmum
- 67. Game time Sarah Richards @escmum
- 68. Type your point in here Sarah Richards @escmum
- 72. Sarah Richards Fix transactions @escmum
- 73. Book a driving test £6.62 - post £4.11 - phone £0.22 - online Sarah Richards @escmum
- 77. 1. Create GDS 2. Fix publishing 3. Fix transactions 4. Go wholesale Sarah Richards @escmum
- 78. The benefits
- 79. GDS saved £500 million £42 million Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 80. A good content strategy can keep people out of jail Sarah Richards @escmum
- 84. Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 89. Digital transformation is culture change
- 90. “Is this from government....? But I understand it....” Sarah Richards
- 91. “... just wanted to encourage the gov.uk team... the information is clear and easily understood by a numpty like me... Can I vote for you in the next election?” Sarah Richards
- 92. “This site is a breath of fresh air for a government website. “Clear, easy to read, uncluttered, straightforward. I found what I wanted to know straight away thank you.” Sarah Richards
- 93. Sarah Richards action: reading it problem: it's full of lies and untruths action: Reading this problem: Government Policy
- 94. The other side
- 95. Helps over 2m people a year Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 96. Helps over 2m people a year in 3,300+ locations 17m (?) visits online 22,200+ volunteers. campaigns Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 97. GDS audience: everyone in the UK Task: sort out a problem/get information Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 98. Citizens Advice audience: everyone in the UK Task: sort out a problem/get information Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 99. As a…. I want to… So that…. Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 100. Advice is hard Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 101. Poster of solution and problem layer Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 102. People don’t know what the problem is Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 103. I need help because… I… (cause) and…. (effect) Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 104. I need help because IFIND THE EXAMPLE OF THIS (cause) and…. (effect) Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 105. Advisers Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
- 106. Strategy: Provide advice in the way it will be best consumed Sarah Richards goodcitizencommu@niceastciomnusm.com
- 107. Strategy: Leave the organisation with a system and the skills to create and maintain a world-class digital solution Sarah Richards goodcitizencommu@niceastciomnusm.com
- 108. Users never stop
- 109. Still to learn...
- 110. Everything Sarah Richards Sa@raehs cRmicuhmards
Editor's Notes
- So today is about users being king (and queen). I like to be equal in everything…
- Hello, [depends on intro] was head of content at gds - left in May now leading my own company called goodcitizencommunications.
- So, what I am going to talk about today is users and how they affect everything - no matter what you do. My presentation is in two halves. What we did at GOV.UK - the british government’s single website for all government information and the second half will be about Citizens advice - the UK’s top charity offering advice. The two are connected as you will see… So to the GOV.UK story….
- Let’s talk about government for a second. Not sure if it is the same all over the world - you tell me if it is the same here. For example, the British government loves structure. It likes rules and regulations. It has armies of people making sure everything is *correct*. For example it builds roads in straight lines, it makes decisions by committee. It knows what’s good for us.
- Bit like this path here. It’s straight, safe and services the road well. The concrete is that draining type so you don’t slip - they’ve thought of everything…. So what is wrong with this picture? *wait* >>
- Yeah, people don’t act like that. government hasn’t thought about the people. User behaviour. People do this.*point* . People want to get where they were going to. They don’t care about government structures or committees or sometimes, even what is good for them. They want answers, quickly and efficiently. And that’s not just a problem for government. This is for websites in general. So how do you sort a problem like this when you are dealing with digital and a behemoth like the british government?
- You call in a digital champion. Or rather, you create one. This is Baroness Martha Lane Fox of Soho, she was digital champion for government and founder of lastminute.com among other things. and in In Nov 2010, before she was a baroness, Martha wrote a report called Revolution, not evolution saying online government services should change
- It’s here, if you want to read it *point to URL* I’ll share these slides on slideshare so you can get the URL later if you are interested. In short, it said do these four things.
- Create the government digital service (GDS) Fix publishing Fix transactions I am going to talk to you about the first three on the list.
- so create gvt dig service >>>
- cab office heart of govt work with depts The team in holborn is now - as I understand is - over 600 people Multidisciplinary - tech, content, design everything So easy, go get the best people in the country pop them in a room and bingo. Away we go. Easy… ;)
- so point two was fix publishing >>>
- Before we get to how we fixed it, I’ll give you an idea of what the problem was. This is just one example, there are others peppered throughout this presentation but I’ll just give you one example.
- So, as an example you may might ask yourself what’s the British govt’s policy on afghanistan
- To find out you may have to look at the Foreign office site
- The ‘other’ foreign office site
- MOD
- DFID
- No 10
- Stabilisation unit *who are they?*
- HO
- Cab office
- THIS IS THE LAST ONE
- And you probably still wouldn’t know. That information was full of jargon, incomplete information, you still probably wouldn’t know what was going on. on 9 websites. So you can see - just by this that we had a problem? Yes? And thats just one part of the problem. I’ll get to the rest of it later.
- So how do you fix publishing? We have two parts of the site. Explain mainstream and not
- We have two parts of the site. Explain mainstream
- The depts and policies bit - the bit with the afghanistan briefing etc is on this. Spout some stats
- This is mainstream process of content Fact check - explain it was new for govt. Total surprise. Content people had the power to publish over the lawyers. Content people’s skill was in communication- we needed to recognise that. Now of course, the guys listen to all the lawers etc have to say. Of course. It has to be right. It just doesn’t need to be 500 pages of legal jargon everyone will ignore. our premise is always understanding content is more important than just reading it. Or skipping it if it is boring legal rubbish.
- IG process So I’ll show you a short video of what this means now.
- So my old team in GDS> So we call them Content designers. Not editors or writers and I’ll tell you why. Not editors. why.
- This is the structure they are in.
- AGILE, Move them around whenever we want. Pool of people. Agile process. move these people around based on GDS’ demands. It’s scaleable.
- So in that video, Ade talked about simpler, clearer, faster - I am going to go into a bit more detail about that.
- Like it? Let’s take some concrete examples of how we got to that. This is still in fixing publishing, really. So there’s a line there: simpler, clearer, faster. let’s take “simpler” I know your government is doing a similar thing so the answer might be yes but So is your government simple? Is interacting with your government simple? Yeah, [respond] but we do have a tendency to make things hard for ourselves. So we went right back to basics>>>
- Doesn’t get much simpler than that. These are our design principles. They are on the web at gov.uk/design principles *point at screen* We started with our user needs. What users actually need from government - not necessarily what government thinks it wants to tell users. So we looked at all our existing content. This came from two sites: Directgov - a site for citizens, and BL - which was for businesses.
- We read at every page on DG and later BL and asked what the actual point was to the page. When i say we, I mean devs, designers and content people. we were multi-disciplinary from day one. Now, there were 5,000 pages on DG and 70,000 English pages on BL (we had NI, Welsh etc but I’m not counting those today).
- So for every piece of content we looked at, we asked four main questions: what is the point of this? people want it? - we looked at all the traffic and search data - massive spreadsheets that told us how long people were on each page, how many links they used for each page etc people expect government to be responsible for meeting this need? Can only government meet this need? (or is someone else doing it better already?) And we did, and still are, limiting ourselves to this.
- For example, do you think government is the best place to find out how to keep bees? No.. This is a page that was on DG. There are other organisations that can do that better than us So we cut all advice you could reasonably get elsewhere. Government should do tasks more than advice.
- Then we had to decide on the formats. Now, this is really where working in a multi-disciplinary team comes into its own. We looked at the best way to present the information to users. We had devs and designers right there. We could do any format we liked: calendars, calculators, flat copy... whatever we could dream up. It would depend on time and money etc but it really was a content person’s dream. The only question was: what would be the best way to convey this to the user. Government can be complicated. We needed to hide as much of that complexity as possible.
- So when we went though every page of DG, we entered all the information about the page in our ‘needotron’ - that’s it there. A big database where we recorded all our decisions. Each of these needs is a record, which looks like >>>
- this. Do you think government should explain to you how double glazing works? No, probably not.
- top search term. had to go in. Once we had done all of this>>>
- we started writing. This is my subliminal slide. Is it working?
- Every piece of info on the site is written to a user need like this. As a, I want to, so that… This keeps us on track when writing content. It keeps us user-centred. All content has to adhere to this style user story.
- For example.. EXPLAIN LPA So to put that theory to the test, I’ll show you an example,
- we had 5x 750 word articles on Lasting Power of Attorney on DG. It was full of caveats and advice.
- We have one on GOV.UK. It is shorter, clearer and chunked into easily digestible sections. It keeps to the facts only. We use the 80/20 rule. we decided to put the information 80% of users would want up front on the page. If you were a minority, the information was still there, it was still findable. It’s just not up front and centre. GOV.UK tells you just the facts you need to know from the UK government. Actually, of the 75,000 DG pages & BL pages, we have just over 3000 on GOV.UK
- So that’s simpler. Now for clearer. Clearer in terms of content strategy for government is about writing for everyone. And we have this>>>
- The style guide. It’s at this web address - have a look. The guide tells all content designers across government about the style and tone of the whole of GOV.UK - mainstream and IG. The guide is more than just how to format dates and times. It shows the whole ethos of GOV.UK
- For example, Plain English is MANDATORY. There really is no need to use complicated terms when simple, usual words will do. Words like tackling are empty, meaningless and can lead to confusion. They are jargon. We are used to government using them but they don’t help people actually understand what is going on. We don’t want them anywhere on GOV.UK. We are government and it is our *responsibility* to write well. We don’t sell books. We tell you how to apply for benefits that can keep you in your home. We tell you your rights if your child gets into trouble with the police. We tell you how to do your tax return so you don’t get a fine or end up in jail. Our information has to be understood by as many people as possible. And plain English is the way to do that.
- There is also no space for waffle anywhere on GOV.UK And the sentence below sums it all up: we are opening up government information to anyone who is interested enough to look. That’s not just highly educated people who have some political bias. That’s anyone. ANYONE at all. So have a look at the style guide. Tell me what you think. Let’s have a look at some examples of ‘clearer’
- Can you tell me how you should dispose of lightbulbs in the UK? There’s little pictures on the BOX PIC No, we couldn’t either. The title gives you an indication of what this is meant to be about: As a citizen I want to throw away lightbulbs properly - so I don’t damage the environment. That info is not on the page. Is the user need to find out what’s in a lightbulb? Like mercury? Not really for the UK govt to tell you that? Perhaps it is about some a WEEE regulation? his is not fulfilling a user need that matches the title. There’s a box at the bottom of this page to give comments. I am going to share some of them with you now.
- look at these
- Channel shift - cash saved by digital by default. Turns out you put them in the bin and it’s clearly marked on the box you get them in. So you don’t need to be much clearer than that.
- So this brings me to another of the GDS design principles: design with data. When we are designing content , we look at a stack of measurements before we even start thinking about the content itself. I’ll give you an example.
- This is a page we are playing with at the moment. It is a browse page for businesses. The government need is to help people set up a business quickly and correctly. It helps the UK get business, people earning money etc. It’s important. There’s a lot of options in setting up a business and most people don’t know what’s available to them. We know users on the citizen and business side of the site usually come to complete a single task and then leave. They don’t want this. So user need vs government need. The dept that really need to push this asked us what we can do. To do that, we needed data.
- And we did. One of our researchers went to people just starting up a business. She asked them their exact thoughts, what they wanted, everything and let them do it in a way that was most natural for them. What are you doing? What are your thoughts? Not ‘this site vs this one’ or do you think ‘this or this’ and give them examples but more ‘tell me what you are just thinking’ This is a poster that one of the research subjects came up with. We found out a bunch of things >>>
- For a start, people setting up a business know what they want to do and don’t want us to get in their way. They have decided what sort of business to have - a limited company, be a sole trader etc and they don’t want distractions. They didn’t want any advice - they only came to government when they had decided and wanted to get on with it. you can’t see it on here but at no point did they go to a government website when they made a decision. They only wanted us to help them complete the task
- The govt department wanted to slow them down. Wanted to MAKE them look at all the alternatives before making a decision. So we have this - I mean it’s there. People do look at it. But not nearly as many people as those who just go to a ‘register me as a sole trader’ etc. Not even close. By time users have an idea of a company in mind, most - not all but most - know what they are going to do. So this is a conflict for us.
- Faster, our last goal for GOV.UK Why should we care about faster? Well, we all know how users read - people don’t. They scan. The faster we can give them the information, the faster they can carry on with their lives. Interacting with government is a necessity, not really a ‘fun’ thing to do. So let me give you an example of what we might consider ‘faster’. >>>>
- we’re going to play a game. On the next slide I will show you a screenshot of the page you got to on DG when you typed ‘passport’ into google. I want you to put up your hand when you find out how much it costs to renew an adult passport. Ok? Ready?
- *WAIT* No. I know. But if you typed passport into google, you’d arrive on this page. Then you’d go to the second title on this page and it’s in the second para. Directgov is still in the national archives if you want to have a look. Okay *pause* so now, we are going to do this again. And again, tell me how much it costs to renew an adult passport.>>>
- yeah, it’s right there in the second sentence.
- and here? *wait until someone puts their hand up* When someone does.>>>
- Yeah, you don’t need to get past google. It’s right there. Traffic is not a priority for us. We just want people t get the information. That’s what we mean by faster. So, moving on now....>>>
- DVLA - own post (zip code) post 10.59 phone 6.57 online 35 cents 4.7 million full and provisional licence holders in Great Britain, and 1.74 million bookings We are looking at these sorts of figures. So we have a ‘digital by default’ strategy. This means, we should make everything that can be, digital first.
- As you can imagine, we design with data and everything is open- even for transactions. So we have this This shows the number of transactions processed each year by the British Government.
- You can see tax-based transactions with volumes in the millions per year, to applications to burn heather and grass, for which only one licence was issued last year. But you can only get that licence from government - so it is important. Right now, transactions are very different. Each government dept creates it’s own services. They look different, they act differently some are not designed in a user-centred way. Now, I worked on some of these services. There are a stack of reasons why they are not as good as they could be. So, as Martha said - we are changing that.
- Now, mainstream copy is controlled by a central GDS team. Transactions are controlled by the depts. So we have a central service design manual to help us maintain consistency and quality across all government services. It is part of our service design manual. I’m biased so I am showing you the content part. Now, if a service doesn’t follow a user-centred process, it doesn’t go live.
- So, lastly, go wholesale....
- GOV.uk doesn’t sell books. It’s not a feel-good site. It’s a keep you out of jail site. >>>
- the way it is written does that. The style guide made it into the national press. They had a field day with it.
- This is from the Daily Mail
- BBC also did a Radio 4 interview about our plain English guidelines
- Explain LPA so many good comments they had to add a new button slap it on the end. never been done before in that service.
- win awards - government sites in the UK don’t do this a lot. A bit but not loads. These are quite special. Design one beat the shard and the olympic cauldron and the pencils there, one and only time won in that category in 15 years. We also have support at the highest level. This is a video of Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister talking in the house of commons. {Video is next}
- End of video: We also have endorsement from people who are respected in British industry VIDEO IS NEXT
- Next is a video of
- End of vid
- Culture change - and let’s face it - transformation of this kind is culture change is much easier when other people talk about it like that *point to screen* The more conversation you encourage, the more ideas you get, the better product you get. Which leads me onto our most important group of people…. GOV.UK’s users
- See. Told you users were everywhere. Lab testing Originally we had a bit of a problem with trust in some users - particularly older users.. That’s why the design is as it is now - to take care of that. People were going to go somewhere else to get info because they couldn’t believe they could understand it. Now, we don’t have that problem. The language is the same but the design is different. That black bar and big old crown gives us more credibility
- Numpty like me. Just explain that. Numpty means stupid person. And users do that don’t they? They blame themselves when we have failed to provide a good user interaction.
- It’s not all sweetness and light though, GDS gets some negative comments…
- At the bottom of each page you can say what is good/bad about the page. We got some of these. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about that :) Benefits of the way we did it: agile, mutidiciplinary etc culture change is only really for the brave. You have to have some serious courage to take on something so huge and get to a lot of those benefits. It’s worth it. I understand you guys are doing similar stuff here, yes? It’s hard. This all looks shiny and lovely. It’s months of pain. if you guys are doing it now, I can only sympathise with the heartache it takes to get you there.
- So you know when I said that GOV.UK wouldn’t do advice? Well, now When we did the Beta we took a decision not to do advice. Government shouldn’t be doing advice, it should be the practical things GDS should focus on. So now I work for large charity in the UK - the largest in fact - and all they do is give advice. It’s the exact opposite - and an extension to GOV.UK so I am lucky to be there.
- Tell them who we help
- Citizens advice has x offices volunteers helping x people per year It offers advice to:
- So to take you back… the government needs to communicate with everyone in the UK, primarily to sort a problem or do research or something.
- For citizens advice… it’s the same. Essentially it is the same. I am making it over-simplified but you get the point
- So we can just shove what we did at GDS to this right? *pause* Wrong. All GDS content is written to this. It doesn’t quite work with citizens advice. The problem is >>>
- Cutting content is… explain about GDS Advice is another thing altogether. Getting in the way of user journeys etc.
- Lots of people come to citizens advice because
- So the story has changed - it’s no longer a typical user story - but it is a user story and we are going to write every new piece of content to that story. But we have two audiences.
- It never stops. Which is one of the reasons I am here. I want to know about your news strategy, what you are up to and how we can learn from you. API
- Building something isn’t good enough. Building it to be improved on is the way to do it. Because…
- Humans are incredible, they never stop learning and doing new things and learning new behaviours. We need to respect that and keep up with them.
- and what do I still have to learn?
- It never stops.