This document discusses a "Technology Advocate Programme" launched by Transport for London to engage end-users in a large change initiative involving new hardware and software. The programme aimed to actively involve frontline staff to help define what technologies would be useful to them. Over 220 volunteers joined in the first few months, and advocates successfully suggested three app ideas. Their early buy-in helped prove the value of an inclusive approach to user engagement for defining technological changes.

1. Viva La Techolution
The Power is With the People
Marc O. Woods
End-User Engagement & Experience
Delivery Consultant

2. Empowerment of the impacted is the key to
successful user engagement resulting in more likely
acceptance of management’s desired outcome
Granny’s Working Premise

3. Copyright to Granny Watson

4. Transport for London
Subject Organization & Programme
Fit for the Future Stations Going Mobile
A simultaneous Operational
and Cultural Change
programme
Hardware and Software
deployment initiative to
enable staff to perform
operational tasks away from a
desk
Biggest Change to TFL for
__ years
Designed to define the
organization’s shape to take it
further into the 21st Century
Highly Contentious with the
unions and staff

5. Key Message from Management
Engage affected staff in all the
changes being made.

6. The active involvement of users for a clear
understanding of user and task requirements
Ji-Ye Mao, Karel Vredenburg, Paul W. Smith, and Tom Carey
User-Centered Design

7. Resistant to Change
Strong Union Presence
Traditionally End-User Excluding
Organizational Reality

8. Actively collaborate with the
End-Users to define what is
going to be useful to them
This inclusive approach
should yield solutions which
would be easy for the target
audience to use
Solution
A Fresh Approach

9. Technology Advocate Programme
Solution

10. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to
accept and use a technology. The model suggests that when users are presented with a new technology, a
number of factors influence their decision about how and when they will use it, notably:
• Perceived usefulness can be defined as the degree to which a person believes that using a particular
system would enhance his or her job performance
• Perceived ease-of-use the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be
free from effort
Supporting Theory

11. The Live Environment

12. • 24hr Shift-working End-Users vs. “9 to 5”
development teams
• Staffing levels on the stations are a set number
by legal requirement
• 270 Disparate location of End-Users vs. much
fewer fixed locations of development teams
The Dilemma

13. A wide cross-section of the
representative user base needed.
This includes variants in:
1. Age
2. Length of service
3. Affected Roles
A large number (5% of total user
community) also needed.
Design Response
NB: This was all to be voluntary. Presented as an opportunity to
influence the technology and “accessories” that would be deployed
and impact their roles

14. • Varying levels of tech savvy
acceptable
• Only requirement is interest in
being part of the shaping of
technology to affect them
• Everyone’s opinion matters no
grade
• Empathy for less-enthused
colleagues stressed
Guiding Principles

15. Involve lowest grades staff
first
Get the support from the
senior management team
Gaining Initiative Support
Development

16. • Able to build rapport rapidly
• Establish Credibility
• Excellent Communicator
• Has genuine empathy
The Change Agent

17. • 100 volunteers in first 3 days - 220 in total
• Model case for use of Yammer as a staff
communication and collaboration tool
• 3 viable apps suggested by advocates in first 6
months of program’s existence
– One currently in discovery
• Wider organization keen to adopt similar
approach to meet their technology
engagement needs
The Result

18. Viva La Techolution
The Power is With the People