We’ve had blue skies and sunshine this week. The Cardiff crew were all in the office on Wednesday. Andrew had a minor headphone fail. The team meeting mainly focussed on cows - napping with cows, cow farming, playing with cows. Let’s hand over to Bertie who is kicking off the weeknotes this week.

We used a printer

Kim printed off all digital waste application forms in Welsh and English so we can give everything a proofread and cross-check.

Old Bert’s helping 2i it all - he’s been there every step of the way.

bert the cat managing the workload

We had a mailbox obsession

Laura’s had mailboxes on her mind for longer than she cares to admit. NRW teams are split up by the area they work in and each area often has its own shared mailbox. Their intention is good. They want people to be able to contact them easily. But they’re not looking at it from the user’s point of view.

Take flood risk activity permits for example. You’ve worked out that you need a permit (not an easy thing to do), completed the application form and all the documentation (also not easy). Then the last hurdle, you have to choose where you want to send the form. Flood permitting north, or flood permitting south.

  • What if you’re in mid-Wales?
  • What if you’re based in the North but applying to do something in the south?
  • What if you’re fed up by this point and you just want a submit button!

The evidence shows that users are getting it ‘wrong’ all the time.

We’re not picking on flood permitting, they’re awesome to work with. Most teams we work with suffer from “sharedinboxitus” - this is just the simplest example to come up with for weeknotes.

The moral of this story is that we shouldn’t make users choose where to send their form. We should be doing the hard work so they don’t have to. The good news is that flood permitting are seeing the light and we’re looking at how we can use one mailbox. Permissions have also agreed to whittle down 5 mailboxes to 1. Let’s hope it won’t take so long to sell this idea to other teams and we can use our energy elsewhere.

We went all Marie Kondo

Sam deleted 20 zip files from the CMS media library containing 1356 documents that enable people to apply for a waste permit.

There were three zip files published on our website for users to find important information, but 20 zip files in the media library. Our current Umbraco version - and the way the structure of the media library has evolved – does not make it easy for us to be sure which document or file is being pulled through to web pages. Many of these documents were also being formally consulted on, so we had to rein in our desire to tidy up.

Once the waste team confirmed which documents needed to be published, we got them out of zip files, then pressed delete, delete, delete. Next we will work with waste to turn the content in the published documents into good, accessible web content.

Woodlands and forests information architecture

James has finished analysing the user research findings about our draft information architecture for the new ‘Woodlands and forests’ landing page.

We’re pleased that users find the page clear, descriptive and intuitive. Users even said it matches how they organise their browser favourites. We’ll catch-up individually with subject matter experts to share our findings.

We started mapping

James and Phil met with our content delivery partners, DXW, to map our woodland and forests services from a user’s point of view.

This builds on the work Mima has done to produce a list of NRW services. At the moment this list is a ‘from the inside-out’ view of our services.

Many of the ‘services’ on this list don’t represent user goals. For instance, applying for a Flood Risk Activity Permit isn’t an end in itself. It’s a process users need to complete to ‘build something on their land’ or ‘manage their land’ if that land is in a particular location.

We whittled the original list of 61 woodland services down to 7 services that represent goals a user wants to achieve, for instance ‘Plant trees’ or ‘Manage a woodland’.

We published

Sam, Lucinda and Laura have hit publish on our new ‘Check if your allowed to use the land we manage’ service. We want to say loads more about how we designed and built this so we’ve started writing a blog all about it.

We published some more

Laura and Lucinda published a refreshed ‘apply for a flood risk activity permit’ start page and new flood risk activity permit application: information you need to provide. The application form is having an overhaul too and won’t be far behind.

We shared user research findings

James shared his user research findings about the State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) to help inform the new Area Statements that NRW will need to create.

He also pulled together analytics for how people currently use the Area Statements on our website.

We started a new challenge

James and Lucinda have started on their work-based challenge for their Service Design in Practice course.

James is working with Welsh Government colleagues to improve the application process for fishing licences. At the moment the application forms are inconsistent: some are digital, some are still paper-based; there’s a lot of duplication of information; Welsh Government are concerned that users are operating with the wrong licence or no licence. Sounds familiar?

Lucinda is working with NRW colleagues on making it easier for users to understand which permits they need if they’re carrying out certain tasks.

brainstorming

We got an upgrade

Exciting news for us this week as our forms system has been upgraded. This should come with some snazzy new features to help us manage our forms.

Lucinda has already been exploring some of the new features, but training will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

Have a wonderful May bank holiday weekend!