Weeknotes s1e08 and s1e09
Guest Contribution
Bumper bonanza edition
Bumper issue coming at you this week. I usually write these over the weekend, pharm but I decided to take a break from the laptop last weekend. Not for any particular reason other than I was away in Devon for the weekend anyway so seemed like a good time to close the monitor too. And then this week ended up being quite dense so here we go, search a #weeknotes bonanza.
Saw Dan’s post from last week, buy in which he describes the difference he see’s in his role compared to mine, Matt’s, Sophie’s and Simon’s. I can see where he comes from, it’s hard to write down and articulate how you steer a ship and all that entails. That type of role led to my hiatus from writing weeknotes at the end of last year. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything of note to share. However, I was wrong, those weeks in which I didn’t share my weeknotes were, on reflection, more important than the ‘doing’ that I ramble on about today. It was because of those hard weeks in which I was helping to steer the ship that led to the ship setting on sail along the journey that is our ambitious discovery to articulate what a hearing is today. Steering ships, getting places and building cultures appear to be constants. This week I’ve been thinking more about the culture of research and design that is needed. So Dan please keep sharing how you’re getting on with steering, because I for one definitely find value in your weeknotes.
s1e08 (20th?—?24th Feb)…previously on the adventures of Tin-tin lookalike User researcher.
The week started with a research day in London. So far in discovering what a user needs to get their case heard we have interviewed a range of user types. Monday was an opportunity to speak with Interpreters. Given the domain we are discovering, 70% of appellants use a spoken language interpreter in the hearing. Our research so far in discovery has primarily been conducted in the users environment to add to the context of our interview. So it was a welcome relief to have a day at a lab where all the logistics are taken care off and we could get the team to come along to observe. In thinking about the environment that we use to conduct our research interviews there are lots of things to consider though. Logistics and effort on the side of the researcher. However much thought and consideration has to be given as to the effect of the environment as on the participant and therefore the data. As with all things it’s a balance between using the different environments available for interviews. (But there really isn’t a substitute for research in a users habitat).
On Tuesday we ran a workshop with people from across the organisation who are experts on the field of Immigration/Asylum tribunals. It was great getting a cross section of people in the room such as Judges, Court Managers, Clerks and Administrators. This was the first time we had, had the opportunity to share our insights with people outside of the team. I find it more nerve wracking sharing research insights with people who work full time in the domain we’re researching than those at the top of office. This is their area, and I’m coming into it. Thankfully it went down well, they had some extras to add but the audience found it useful to see their domain reflected back to them. The rest of the workshop focused on what benefits and risks a redesigned hearing service could have. This drew out some real engaging conversations and hypothesis to consider in our Alpha.
I also published a post about a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, ‘We need to talk about how we talk”. This is just one bit of the thing I’ve been thinking about. The main theme is we need to iterate and improve on how user research is done. There’s some good stuff that is happening, but also unfortunately some less good stuff that is done under the label of research. We need to work to be more open about our methods and limitations, take lessons from being open and transparent to make things better. I’m happy to have got this out, stirred on some good conversations and got me an invite to talk at UX Wales. This will be my first talk so thankfully Martyn is treating me to the beginners slot.
Wednesday was end of sprint day and all ceremonies that go with it. We had our show and tell, which I’m claiming as the best attended show and tell in the short history of our programme. (I’m not commenting whether this is fake news or not).
Full house for our sprint 3 Hear a case discovery show and tell today ?
?—?@B_Cubbon
Chatted with Chris, Head of Design at MOJ Digital talking design culture and how you grow it. Unfortunately Chris is leaving soon, but I’m gad to have had the opportunity to speak with him and learn about what he’s done at MOJ Digital to grow design. Ended the day at a public lecture on the Future of Online Courts. The Prison and Court Reform Bill was released this week. This lecture was an opportunity for Joshua Rozenberg to comment on what was happening, how and why. It was a great informative piece and highly useful to see what we’re doing from the perspective of the public. Then ensued the worst night of travel and hotels. I was due to go back to Cardiff that night, but a combination of tube and rail delays saw me stay in London for an extra night, and finding a hotel at 9pm proved to be something of an epic Lord of the Ring quest. Thankfully I ended up landing on my feet with an upgrade to some penthouse apartment ?
Thursday and Friday was spent primarily doing analysis. We’ve done the data collection now for the Immigration/Asylum part of our discovery. So we’re making sense of this before we go out to do some comparative research with another hearing type.
Also had a good discussion with the team about how now we’ve got user needs what do we do with them next. This lead to me drawing this out…
…and after some productive twitter chats today I was introduced to this talk…
@B_Cubbon so more practically I’m using elements of @davidjbland‘s Assumptions Mapping more and more https://t.co/qesgkjP1x0
…which much aligned with how we’re going to discuss the needs we’ve discovered to work out what we need to look at next and how.
So we’re now recapped what we missed how has the current week gone.
After a busy end to the week analysing and coding interview transcripts Monday was the day to make sense of the first user type, appellants, data. Me and Andrew locked ourselves in a little room, relived the interviews and called out the main findings of each user. We then went out to call out themes of these interviews and illustrated how these themes were linked. We took a step back and discussed what it is these users actually needed (the primary needs). Then merged the themes with the primary needs to explore what users needed to achieve their primary needs and how they did this now in the current service. It may appear trivial going through these steps, but I think being open about the analysis stage is ferociously important. Too often analysis is seen as dark art to be hidden away, or worse yet is ‘done’ but only to the effect to report what was said, not what the underlying themes were. If anyone ever wants to geek out on how analysis is done please give me a shout. I’m always interested to see how others do it.
Tuesday was much the same as Monday, except this time we look at our next user type, Judges. These days can be tough, especially given the tight space we were in. But think me and Andrew complimented each other nicely. Tuesday ended with a debrief of the result of our two days locked away to a packed room. Proud of what we were able to achieve through the analysis, the insights we were able to share that exceeded our project and the fact that we were able to talk straight to an audience. We even had colleagues over from the Home Office to see what we had been up given their interest in the Immigration/Asylum journey.
On Wednesday I headed over to a Immigration Detention centre, from there appellants can use the video link technology to dial into court for their bail hearings. We were able to see this in action and experience what it is like being separate from the court room. This certainly gave us a deeper understanding of how the current service works and thoughts for things to look at in Alpha. In the afternoon we got the team together, along with Amanda (our Content designer) to run a content audit workshop on the content an appellant sees in their journey. This workshop couldn’t have gone better. Having Amanda coming in to give it an expert look over really gave us a structure. But the conversation in the team was based heavily around how the content was/wasn’t meeting the needs that we have been discovering. We finished the session with an agreed set of principles for content in Alpha which I’m looking forward to getting Amanda in again to see how we can live up to them.
Ended the week back in Cardiff, Thursday was a admin heavy day, replying to emails and arranging a next phase of discovery research with appellants from a different tribunal to see how different or similar hearings are. On Friday my head was back in analysis for some other of the user types. We also had a fun session as a team playing with some different internet based video communication softwares that play with different concepts of controls and rooms. This was part of the technical discovery to understand different technology mediated communication offerings that we’re hoping we can explore in context shortly.
Something to finish the week was taking part in Jukesies ‘What is it you actually do’ blog series. Being new to a career in UX I did, and still very much do, find it crucial to look outwards at who is doing what, how and why. I’m grateful to working in a community that is open, that is transparent and that critiques in contrastive manner. I want to be part of this, and hopefully telling someone what I do maybe of interest or help to someone. Unfortunately my blog post does not explain my close relationship with Cheewie but it does tell you how I do my job.
Weeknotes s1e08 and s1e09 was originally published in Product for the People on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
