Skip to content

Archive for September, 2011

Sep 27

Magnifying glass by Chris Beckett, CC BY-NC-ND
8 Comments

Piloting new ways of measuring digital success

This post was contributed by Joanne Inskip, Senior Customer Insight Manager at the Government Digital Service:

 

At the start of 2011, the GDS Customer Insight team were given the task of developing a research methodology that could:

  • Measure the performance of digital government services (specifically: task completion rates, time taken, drop out points, user comprehension and satisfaction)
  • Be used on the live services as well as those in development
  • Blend behavioural data with perception data
  • Be rolled out across government to provided consistent measures for digital transactions

Read more about our Summative Test system

Sep 26

Working out the agile way forward - Photo by Steve Lamb.
3 Comments

What a great turnout for the first Agile Tea Camp

Over 30 people turned for the very first meeting of the Agile Tea camp, held Thursday 22 September at Café Zest, on the 2nd Floor of the House of Fraser store in Victoria Street, Westminster. There was lots of networking before hand, with old friends catching up and Twitter pals recognising each other over tea and cake before Mark O’Neill set the scene to Agile Tea: simply, an opportunity for people that work with Agile principles to get together, informally and open to everyone, on the third Thursday of every other month.
Read more about The First AgileTea Meeting

Sep 22

Re-use this data buttons
6 Comments

Building APIs, building on APIs

Public APIs are a vital feature of the modern web. Whether you’re looking at the ecosystem of Twitter and Facebook apps, tools for managing auctions on ebay, or code for embedding Youtube videos in a blog post, clear ways of integrating services are key for building more captivating web experience, and for bringing solutions to users where they are. It’s that latter point that underpins the recommendation in Martha Lane Fox’s report that: “the content, functionality and features of the service should … be widely available and open for re-use via syndication/apps.”
Read more about building API’s

Sep 19

A portion of a treemap diagram from the needotron
29 Comments

Introducing the Needotron: working out the shape of the product

Working out the exact “shape” of the gov.uk beta has been a long, difficult process.  Working out what needs it should meet, how best each need should be met and then defining how the whole proposition hangs together are hard problems.

But gaining a clear, shared understanding of this overall ‘shape’ is also fundamental to building a good digital product – “Every superfluous page we create is one more dead end for an angry, frustrated, confused user”

This blog post is about how we went about defining the shape of the citizen-facing beta of gov.uk, and the tools we developed along the way.
Read more about the Needotron

Sep 13

User Stories Analysis. Photo courtesy of CannedTuna
12 Comments

The First AgileTea Meeting

Hi, my name is Abby Peel and I have recently joined Mark O’Neill in the Innovation and Delivery team within the Government Digital Service as Head of Community. The team is working with government and non-government communities to continue to promote fast, lean, cost effective and agile solutions to major ICT & digital challenges. As part of our work  I’d like to announce AgileTea; an informal opportunity to get together with other people who work with agile methods, those who are interested in it, or those who know nothing about it but want to know more!

Read more about AgileTea

Sep 5

Hands operating a laptop with JAWS Screen Reader
18 Comments

Accessibility and the Single Government Domain

Hello! I’m Léonie Watson. I’m working with Government Digital Service (GDS) on the accessibility of the beta site. This is the first of a series of accessibility focused posts I’ll be putting together over the next few months.

Read more about Accessibility and the Single Government Domain

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,318 other followers