What name did we start with?
As is often the case with government projects, we initially referred to our service by the name given to our team when it was set up: this was Awarding organisation digital platform (abbreviated to AODP).
It soon became clear that ‘AODP’ neither described what the service would provide nor was helpful to its users. Everyone we spoke to referred to it as simply ‘the portal’.
Who was the service for?
The service was actually being designed both for internal users (DfE and IfATE) and external users (awarding organisations). Awarding organisations would complete an application for government funding for their qualification. Then DfE and IfATE would review these applications against various criteria and make a decision on whether the qualification should be funded or not.
To help us, we decided to ask our users what they would call our service.
What would our users call the service?
Awarding organisations suggested the following: Funding hub, Funding applications, Applications manager, Funding application portal, Qualification funding portal and Funding for qualifications. Comments ranged from: “Qualification funding is too broad - but I can’t think of anything better” to “Something with ‘funding approval’ in the title.”
DfE and IfATE users offered suggestions of Post-16 qualifications review portal and Qualifications approval portal before observing correctly that “The use of the word portal doesn’t feel like plain English”. Other suggestions included Qualification approval system and Application evaluation system.
The conclusion was that we needed something with ‘funding approval’ or ‘qualification funding’ in the title.
Naming conventions
We followed GDS guidance to use a verb in the title and considered such names as Review qualification funding or Review funding approval for reviewers. And we considered Get funding approval, Get qualification funding or Submit a qualification for awarding organisations.
We also considered an option such as ‘Manage qualification funding’ to possibly work for both reviewers and awarding organisations. However, due to being very different journeys needing different Start pages, we made the decision to have two different names. This is standard practice within DfE so made sense to both us and the users.
What name did we choose for our service?
The final decision was Approve qualification funding for reviewers and Apply for qualification funding for awarding organisations.
Although as this was an alpha project, it was still to be tested with users and therefore was subject to future iteration.