Weeknotes 13/10/2023
Another week. Lots of publishing, design and learning.
Felling licence
James and Paul demonstrated the new felling licence content to a stakeholder group including Welsh Government, conservation groups and the forestry industry.
By working in the open and demonstrating our work in train, we stand a greater chance of catching potential pitfalls early and improving our stakeholders’ understanding of what we’re doing and why.
User research
James is preparing to hold user research interviews on getting a horse-riding permit for Newborough and getting permission to film on NRW land.
By speaking to people who experience our services directly, we increase the chances of delivering digital services that work for people. All user research adds value, sometimes it throws up something that shows you’re off on the wrong track from the beginning and means you can reassess without wasting long periods of time on something that users neither want nor need.
Anecdotally, we know that we’re losing revenue because permissions are difficult to gain. If we can understand from our users what they find frustrating and what they actually need, we’ve got a much better chance of not only making it easier for them but also maximising the financial return from our estate.
Medium combustion plant application forms
Working with the subject matter expert, Andrew made further amends to the medium combustion plant digital application form
Improvements had been suggested by the permitting team and user feedback. This is a good example of continuous improvement and Agile-working in action. These forms are extremely complex legislatively. We designed them as best we could at the outset, released them on the world (…well, Wales), observed how they were being used and then brought relevant staff together to make them clearer and easier to use.
A similar scenario occurred last week with transferring and surrendering water discharge forms. In that case we brought together permitting and the permit receipt centre to amend the forms and address concerns about how they were being used.
In both the above cases, the need for changes were identified and actioned quickly with the input of relevant staff and considering user feedback and behaviour. It demonstrates how digital content and application forms can be improved efficiently whilst maintaining governance by involving the right people.
As with most things digital, there’s a pertinent Agile maxim: Fail first, fail fast. To put it another way, we develop the minimum thing that will get the job done, then continuously improve it based on how it’s being used, how we’re finding it internally and on feedback from users.
Constructed wetlands guidance
Shaun finally completed some content that makes boomerangs look lame. The constructed wetland guidance has been in construction for around eighteen months; it’s seen multiple iterations and rewrites and been pulled by the Regulatory Business Board for months. We’ve settled on five pages from an overview of constructed wetlands to specific information on the kind of wetland users may require depending on their purpose.
Aside from the multiple delays, there’s a lesson here on why guidance for the website shouldn’t be written by comment from various parts of the organisation. The latest version read exactly like what it was, a collection of disparate statements setting out what is important to NRW from our own perspective.
In an ideal world website guidance should be written by a content designer in conjunction with a subject matter expert. In that way the content designer can play the part of the user and ensure the guidance flows in a logical order and speaks to the task the user is trying to complete.
Constructed wetlands crosses multiple regulatory regimes, so it’s easy to understand why so many out of context additions were made but there is a better and more efficient way of doing this and that’s for your friendly content designer to speak to the various subject matter experts to get their views and then design the guidance as a whole. If we don’t do this, the web-pages appear to be disparate statements that are difficult to follow and make the user feel they haven’t been considered.
If you think you’re developing guidance that will end up on the website (and frankly, where else is it going to go) take a look at our content and publishing manual and contact the digital team. We can advise on how best to get the guidance to the right users, consider existing content on the site and design it so users can find and understand it with minimum effort. If we do this right, the entire website will start to feel more cohesive and become a service users like to utilise. It’ll reduce enquiries, pre-applications and incorrect applications and engender a sense among our customers that we’re doing the best we can to make their lives a bit easier.
Monthly publishing and accessibility
Sophie’s been meeting with people across the organisation to discuss their content requests and get a better understanding of the scope of what they want, before mocking up content in our test site for review.
It’s also publishing time of the month! This is one of our busiest weeks, where we are sent monthly reports and data for publishing to the website.
To be published, content must meet our organisation’s legal accessibility requirements, and be written in simple language, which is free from jargon.
How can typeface (font) impact accessibility?
“Typefaces are the foundation of accessible visual reading experiences, so choosing a performant typeface that enhances legibility and readability for people with poor vision, learning disabilities, aphasia, dyslexia or low adult literacy is of paramount importance if you want your written information to be as accessible as possible.”
To be truly accessible, typeface and font has to be designed in combination with the other best practices, but without a good choice of typeface things like colour contrast will have limited impact.
A few guidelines to help inform your typeface use:
- Use a font style that is appropriate to your audience.
- Minimise the occurrence of imposter letter shapes that are designed to be very similar to other letter shapes as part of the typeface’s visual style.
- Minimise the occurrence of mirroring letter shapes.
- Letters should be easily distinguishable from one another.
- Ensure the typeface has adequate letter spacing.
- There should be a visible difference between capital height and ascenders.
- Test the suitability of any typeface/font in context.
In our team, we use Arial even when sending emails to other members of staff, because this sans-serif typeface has been highlighted as an accessible choice in font.
Trauma-informed design: passing trend or new aspect of accessibility?
For Design System Day , Lucinda and Sam joined a session on trauma-informed design.
The session highlighted that ‘designing for everyone’ includes considering people with trauma who may have stress responses to not being about to do certain things.
The speaker, Katharine Beer from the Department for Education opened up about her own experience of having a negative reaction to queues and noise at a vaccine centre. The staff at the centre noticed her distress and took her away to a quiet room to wait and be away from the atmosphere that was triggering her. Katharine was still able to get vaccinated that day as the staff adapted the service to her needs.
Another example was about a user applying online for power of attorney. The person was already distressed coming to the service and the difficulty navigating it caused them to breakdown. They felt as though the service was setting them up to fail. A reminder that a digital service can be triggering.
The difference with these two experiences was that the vaccine centre staff could see the effect the service was having on Katharine. A digital service can’t see the user cry. How can you fix what you can’t see?
The session went on to give good examples of design and content that could be triggering including:
- error messages in forms (why are they always in red?)
- poor choice of language
- content that is difficult to understand
The session invited some interesting discussion of how design systems can be challenged if there is a good reason to believe the language or design could affect a user negatively.
Katharine covered a sensitive topic very well with a constant reminder that she was not an expert or a therapist.
Lucinda found the discussion around error messages and forms particularly interesting. Sam added a card to their ‘Doing something on NRW land’ to review the error messaging on the forms.
Some handy links for anyone interested:
- Youtube video: Trauma-informed website design – Melissa Eggleston
- Youtube video: How can we design online products for safety - Eva Penzeymoog
- Working definition of trauma-informed practice - GOV.UK
Other Design System day highlights
Heledd dipped into some sessions to find out more about how people actually manage and develop design systems.
In the past we attempted to look at a design system with branded digital assets, but we never managed to have a team to complete or maintain it. This seems to be a common problem, and why starting with the GDS Design system is a sensible choice for any design team - since there’s a lot of research gone into testing, iterating and documenting the design decisions.
Now that our content and publishing manual is live and kicking, it’s a good start for a design system for content, and we’re using lots of the patterns from the GDS Design system, where we can.
There was a fascinating talk by Vicky Teinaki about the history of design systems, patterns and components.
It was a good reminder of what may be best practice now, may not be in the future - so joining in events, and keeping up to date with updates to the Gov.uk design system and events where people share what’s working for users (and not) is important (and interesting!).
Some more handy links:
- Design for real life
- Home – GOV.UK Design System
- Home Office Design System
- Geri Reid - Building the Constellation Design System
- Should I Use A Carousel?
Online recruitment
Lucinda has also been working on an online application service for users to apply for a job. She hopes a good chunk of this will be live by 1 November.
API portal
James and Lucinda have been continuing to work on the branding and style of the new API portal.
Friday Fun Fact…
The little three line icon which denotes a menu on virtually all websites is called the hamburger and is forty two years old.
Read more about the history of the hamburger .
Weekend wellbeing…
“In the same way as a muddy, turbulent pool quiets itself when left alone, you have to know how to leave your mind alone. It will quiet itself.”
– Alan Watts