Another busy week in the Digital Team. Some of us will be looking forward to some time off for half-term next week.

Prepping for user research about our Send a flood message service

James has been working on the discussion guide for user interviewers to dig into our new Send a flood message service. This is the system our flood officers user to issue alerts and warnings.

Screenshot of the ‘Send a flood message’ tool

We launched a new messaging platform in July 2024 as part of the roll-out of our Flood Warning Information Service for Wales. The new platform aimed to make the work of our flood officers easier and more intuitive during stressful situations.

James will hold 8 user interviews with flood officers to find out whether we can improve the new service now that it’s been tested in live flood events:

  • Are the options clear and unambiguous?
  • Are there any redundant tasks when sending a warning message?
  • Have we removed any useful functionality from the previous service?

James is hoping to hold the interviews early in March.

Improving our Check your flood risk by postcode service

James has been having regular catch-up meetings with the project team responsible for making changes to our Check your flood risk by postcode service.

The changes are largely driven by concerns that users don’t understand that the service shows flood risk for an area, not individual properties.

We’ve always had a prominent message giving this caveat but as we know, users in a digital environment often jump straight to search bars or click on links. They’re often ‘text-blind’ to the surrounding information that doesn’t directly move them forward in their task.

Screenshot showing the Check your flood risk tool

We’re exploring different ways of making the ‘flood risk for an area not a property’ message part of the entire user journey. We’re also looking at adding more value on the flood risk results page by linking out to further details for users who want that extra information.

Writing better content about fisheries

As part of the species licensing improvement work, Sam and Phil had a great meeting with a fisheries expert. They gained a better understanding of the day-to-day realities of people who apply for a licence:

  • where they work
  • what they do
  • how and when they do it

They discussed the limitations of some of the questions in the existing paper licensing form. They then explored how clearer questioning in a new online form would give users the best chance of giving us the right information, first time.

New Fly-tipping Action Wales content

Kim and Sam met with the Fly-tipping Action Wales team to share a mock-up of a new campaign style page. The plan is to move guidance for the public and small businesses on the existing Fly-tipping Action Wales website to the NRW site – improving it as they go.

Using Citizen Space, Kim and Sam are also creating a space for campaign resources that the Fly-tipping Action Wales share with organisations across Wales – things like social media images, posters and flyers.

Kim and Sam ran a content crit with our team this week to get feedback about some of the challenges they faced presenting the content in our web page templates.

Learning about delivering accessible services

Some of our team attended a CDPS communities of practice virtual meeting on Wednesday to learn more about delivering accessible services. The meeting was a chance for the six CDPS communities of practice to discuss how visually impaired and blind users experience public services in Wales.

Stuart Ball from Sight Life shared examples the impact of good and bad accessibility on visually impaired and blind users.

Picture of a robin in the winter snow

Other things we’ve been working on

  • This week, some of the Cardiff team got together to brainstorm and discuss next steps in some of the projects taking place within the team. Finding time to share insights and feedback with one another can be difficult in busy weeks, but these meetings are valuable in remote teams like ours. As individuals, the tendency to overthink our choices can be an easy trap to fall into, but presenting the options in group settings can make all the difference in effectively building a service or content that meets a purpose and fulfils our user’s needs.
  • Lucinda is working on a way to help manage the content of flood messages
  • Toyah has finally been able to publish the revamped marine licensing page (as mentioned a couple of weeknotes ago!)