All posts tagged
government

UX in Government: Why we need to stop calling it ‘Citizen Experience’

As long as the ‘C’ in the hashtag #CX refers to customer, citizen or community, there’s no improvement of clearity.

“Why not Community Experience? I know it puts less emphasis on an individual user than the word “Citizen” — but let’s admit it — citizen actually refers to someone who belongs in or to a context. See? The word citizen carries with it the idea of community any ways! And the communities our ‘customers’ (users, citizens) belong to, or feel excluded from, directly impacts how they experience our services in any case.”

Jamie Lee ~ Medium

Connecting government, libraries and communities: Information behavior theory and information intermediaries in the design of LibEGov.org

InfoScience meets eGov.

“As e-government grows in scope and complexity, an increasing number of e-government services have surpassed the digital technology access and literacy of many members of the public. The “digitally excluded” often seek information intermediaries — such as public libraries and other community anchor institutions — to bridge their information needs and e-government systems. The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of user-librarian-agency government interaction within the context of the information worlds framework. In this paper, the authors describe the data — surveys, case studies, interviews, site visits, and usability and accessibility testing — used to analyze the needs of the public, libraries, and government agencies.”

(Paul T. Jaeger, Ursula Gorham, John Carlo Bertot, Natalie Greene Taylor, Elizabeth Larson, Ruth Lincoln, Jonathan Lazar, and Brian Wentz ~ First Monday 19.11)

Digital government service: The fragmented experience

Government must become the new hunting ground for UX designers, as well as Health and Education. Which is Government in the broadest sense.

“Governments around the world face a set of challenges that are highly complex and interconnected: education, health, social security, and transparency to name a few. Public institutions haven’t changed much in the last couple of centuries. Their architecture, practices, processes, platforms and communication streams have remained pretty much the same. We have 18th century institutions trying to deal with 21st century problems.”

(Livework)

Introducing dialogues: A technique for delivering better government services

An three-part article we wrote for the Touchpoint 5.2 issue from the Service Design Network.

Disclosure: I work at Informaat (The Netherlands) ~ “This three-part article is about a new technique in design projects for citizen-centred government services: the ‘dialogue’. We will introduce dialogues to the service design community and share our lessons learned in using this technique. We also want to explore how dialogues create a shared understanding and commitment among designers and internal stakeholders.”

(Mark A. Fonds a.k.a. @markafonds & Peter J. Bogaards a.k.a. @bogiezero ~ Informaat βiRDS on a W!RE)

Smaller, better, faster, and stronger: Remaking government for the digital age

Or how digital disrupts government as well.

“The internet is changing our world in more ways than we could ever have imagined. And as it reaches into every corner of our lives, it is transforming our relationships with one another, the jobs we do and the ways we spend our time. For the organizations living through these changes, the operating environment has changed profoundly. Around the world, industry after industry has been turned on its head by the internet and the things that digital technology makes possible. But when we look back over the last two decades, nowhere has the internet revolution been felt less than in the business of government. To its credit, the current administration has made a real effort to up the pace of reform. Much progress has already been made, spearheaded by the new Government Digital Service. The Government Digital Strategy lays out what more there is to do over the next two years. That the government goes on to achieve the goals it has set itself is tremendously important. It is also only the beginning.”

(Chris Yiu with Sarah Fink ~ Policy Exchange)

Insights into site search

With optimal design, search goes down, browse goes up.

“This crossover presents a challenge for site search: how do we meet the advanced needs of professional users without confusing members of the public who just want a simple answer? We can’t rely on the page they searched from to define which type of user they are; some people expect to search only within that department, but others have landed in the wrong place and need to find the general results. One of our priorities for this project was to start making search better for advanced users, without getting in the way of less experienced users.”

(Tara Stockford a.k.a. @tarastockford ~ Government Digital Service)

Design for public good

Governments is some countries are stepping up regarding design and their added value for citizens.

“Design is a key source of innovation and therefore part of the solution to the growth challenge Europe is facing. Every day we see start-up businesses inspired by design and creative thinking, and leading global enterprises using it as a means to boost business development and gain competitive advantage. Worldwide there is also an increasing focus on how design and other creative skills can contribute to a green transition. A major part of a product’s environmental footprint is defined through the early design phase, so many environmental issues can be solved by focusing on reducing environmental impact early in the development process. Rapid urbanisation is another example. The rise of mega-cities with millions of inhabitants is increasing the need for design solutions both technical and social that can meet the challenge of creating sustainable urban environments on a huge scale.”

(Design Council)

Government service design manual: ‘Digital by default’ service standard

Besides Estonia, these people in the UK are leading the way for sure.

“From April 2014, all new and redesigned digital services will need to be so good that people prefer to use them. (…) Remember, this site is currently a prototype. We are continuing to work on the content that is hosted here, and will add more guidance and features after the release in April 2013.”

(GOV.UK)

Service design in government: A systematic approach to designing digital government

System thinking connected to design thinking. Deep thinking for government digital services.

Disclosure: I work at Informaat (The Netherlands) ~ “In this ten-minute presentation, the new digital reality and grand challenges facing government are identified, and the way in which Informaat’s systematic design approach can be a solution to meet these challenges is outlined. The guiding principles of this approach are putting citizens at the center of design, applying outside-in thinking throughout, and visualizing as much as possible. By harnessing the power of personas, journeys, ecosystems, dialogues, wireframes and prototypes, government services can be delivered in the best possible manner.”

(Mark Fonds ~ BiRDS on a W!RE)

10 Principles for Service Design

Always good to have some principles to design by. In whatever domain it applies.

“James Lawther has spent the past 20 years working in factories, supermarkets and call centres. Apparently he is fascinated by operations and is always on the lookout for ways to make them work cheaper faster or better. But we are interested in him because he writes a great blog about service improvement and offered to give us some thoughts on service design, so we took him up on this and here’s what he came up with.”

(James Lawther a.k.a. @SquawkPoint ~ The Service Design Programme)

What is the emerging role of design in the public sector?

Design is now so ubiquitous, it’s exploding into all kinds of industries: health, education, business, tourism, and now even government as well.

“And so we find ourselves seeking a deeper transformation in the way we organise and build our society. We face a choice about the future we want to create and live within and who should be entrusted with envisioning, contributing and ultimately delivering that future. From the invention of the modern concept of the designer as an agent for change in the industrial era, to the demands of an ever-changing, interconnected global community, our needs for design and creativity have evolved. Designers are increasingly directing their talents to new problems, bringing professional creativity to the biggest and most important challenges of our times. As we acknowledge that the unprecedented demands facing public services cannot be met by increased funding alone, it seems right to look to those dissatisfied optimists for new approaches that will help deliver the innovative solutions we need.”

(Andrea Siodmok a.k.a. @designcomedy ~ Design Council)