Civic tech userneeds
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This document discusses user needs in the context of government digital services. It emphasizes that understanding user needs should be the bedrock of service design and that user needs come from people's lived experiences rather than being customized for a specific project or department. Realizing user needs involves contextual research to understand what people currently do and using methodologies like Indi Young's Mental Models to standardize maps of user needs and how organizations respond to them. Words used to describe needs matter, and needs should be stated from the user's perspective and in a way that is understandable to them.
Civic tech userneeds
- 1. Leisa Reichelt Head of User Research, Government Digital Service GDS
- 3. Our aim is to make services so good, people prefer to use them through a radical focus on user needs not govt needs GDS@leisa
- 4. everyone is talking about user needs.
- 6. GDS@leisa
- 7. GDSLeisa
- 9. but what exactly is a user need?
- 10. ‘You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means’ - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
- 11. Well understood and clearly stated user needs are the bedrock of service design
- 12. Evolving our understanding of user needs. GDS@leisa
- 13. user needs are stable the jobs people need to do when they have to interact with government don’t change much over time.
- 14. how we meet those needs is less stable. policy, services, technology.
- 15. user needs come from the lived experience of real people. they are not customised to a project or a department
- 16. And so these men of Hindustan disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right And all were in the wrong.
- 17. "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." - Werner Heisenberg
- 19. Discovery: what’s the user need?
- 20. contextual research: what do people do now?
- 22. Pop up research GDSGDSLeisa Reichelt Markets
- 29. Use Indi Young’s Mental Models research methodology and visual output to standardise maps of user needs & organisational responses. GDS@leisa
- 30. words matter
- 31. ‘As a PAYE taxpayer I want to understand how to calculate my tax code so that I can make sure I’m on the right tax code’ GDS@leisa
- 32. ‘As a PAYE taxpayer I want to make sure I’m on the right tax code so that I pay the right amount of tax’ GDS@leisa
- 33. ‘As a PAYE taxpayer I want to make sure paying the right amount of tax so I have the most money to live on.’ GDSLeisa Reichelt
- 35. GDS
- 36. GDS
- 37. GDS Plan (and budget) to do user research. User needs are not a ‘nice to have’
- 38. To really waste time and money all you need to do is build a service nobody wants and nobody can use - John Waterworth