People in Natural Resources Wales are talking more about user centred design. It’s great that colleagues are starting to get it and are enthused by it. Our digital team has been talking to the organisation about this for years. We’ve tried show and tells, we’ve weeknoted, delivered training and we’ve delivered lots of good stuff in a user-centred ways. When our words are quoted back now, it’s a positive thing and part of a long and bumpy process of change.

This week’s myths to bust

This week’s digital team inbox has underlined the fact that there are still myths to bust about how we work. Here are five.

Myth 1: We’re a team of website publishers

Often the digital team is at the end of a long process of content production and committee/board sign off – staff think they must send us content at the end of the process, and we will publish it.

Some content we do publish on request. But for most content, the digital team needs to be involved in some way from its inception so that users can find, understand, and use our content and services. We can then decide how we - as a team with its own expertise - will prioritise and approach the work.

Myth 2: We don’t really do user research

Sometimes we hear colleagues say that we ‘don’t do enough user research’. In fact, We’ve done lots of in-depth research over the years, including with people who:

  • need to do something potentially licensable in or near the sea
  • want to use our land for an event or activity
  • need a licence to catch, disturb or kill certain species
  • are affected by flooding
  • handle hazardous waste
  • register waste exemptions

We’ve also tested the website using the Top Tasks approach. So, we have no shortage of insights. They have helped us improve certain content and services so users can find, use and understand them.

Myth 3: The digital form builder doesn’t work

Some of our digital forms don’t work as well as they should, but this is not the fault of the form builder. These forms have been copied and pasted from Word forms as, in the past, we have not had the agency to do anything else - an approach which just doesn’t work.

Many forms work well, as evidenced by user feedback. The ones that do work well, do so because we’ve been able to design them around user needs, and to digital standards.

Myth 4: We need infographics on the site to ‘help tell the story’

Infographics can be useful in presentations or in communication content. On our website, we need to publish content for all users that is clear, succinct, not duplicated - and where the user expects to find it.

Myth 5: The digital team isn’t aware of some of the problems with the site

Many content and accessibility audits, testing, research, feedback and discovery sessions in, we have an excellent understanding of the website issues for users. Fixing this is never as straightforward is it appears and it takes a lot longer to fix than it does to publish something that doesn’t work.

Working in the open

As well as weeknotes, we’re doing more regular blogging - aiming to publish one every other week.

So far, we’ve talked about how our team has worked to:

  • relieve administrative burden on users and staff
  • replace lots of content with a simple user-led ‘check service’
  • merge 6 forms into one to make it easier for the user
  • reduce content duplication with us and Welsh Government by closer working

  • design bilingually

    This week’s work

So much interesting stuff going on this week:

  • James is working on his presentation for the show and tell about our species licensing user interviews
  • Shaun is working on new track spraying content, as well as updating ammonia assessment content
  • Lucinda continues work on flood warnings sign in - currently being accessibility tested
  • Sophie is writing a blog on how we approach weeknotes and Toyah a blog on how an audit helped her improve the marine licensing content
  • Sophie is meeting with Citizen Space to chat about how consultations are published
  • Heledd has been in lots of meetings in preparation for the Alpha with Deloitte starting next week
  • Alex has been working on exploring GOV.UK Pay options
  • Sam finished work on the annual regulation report summary content - it was a shame we hadn’t been able to influence the shape of the full report as we’d hoped
  • Kim has been working through the backlog, publishing updates to content, consultations and corporate information
  • Phil, Sam and Kim are standardising form email triggers so that we have a consistent way of wording bilingual notification emails to NRW teams. We were joined by Gruff from the translation team this week for a spot of pair writing. Gruff made sure that as we created the text it was all translated and made sense in both Welsh and English.
  • Sophie’s been publishing new content and updating some of the old content to ensure it aligns with our current style guide (small title changes can help users find the information they need quickly and efficiently)
  • Sam had meetings about Habitats Regs 9A reporting and continues work iterating the grant application form and content
  • We’re one step closer to launching our new training materials for staff and colleagues within the organisation! Following an exciting meeting with Gwennan to discuss options for interactivity to make our content engaging for users, Sophie has begun building out a series of PowerPoint presentations that we can add animations to