Background
In previous phases of our project, we didn’t have team capacity to look at how to automate user access to guidance, so it remained out of scope. We had provided a generic link to GOV.UK in earlier prototypes, even though we knew this was not an ideal user experience.
In this phase, we could now look at providing options and recommendations for access to relevant guidance from a data-driven allocation statement.
For clarity - this was not a full review of the guidance content against the DfE and GDS style guides.
Our starting point
Before we could make any recommendations, we needed to fully understand the content landscape for adult allocations, including:
- what guidance exists?
- how is it structured?
- what guidance is currently available from the statements?
- who owns this guidance?
And ideally – what do users consider to be their ‘key’ guidance? Specifically:
- what are they reading?
- what do they need to understand their statements?
- where do they go if something doesn't look right?
Auditing the guidance
Our first step, building on the work already done in beta, was to conduct a content audit of guidance related to advanced learner loans and adult skills fund.
To document our findings, we created an audit spreadsheet, working with content owners to collect relevant information.
We mapped out the journey from the current online (pre-data-driven) statements to the guidance available.
We then created a structure map of the content as it relates to the GOV.UK information architecture/taxonomy.
Checking for scalability
To help evidence that our future recommendations will scale to other funding streams, we also audited 2 non-adult funding examples: PE and sport premium and dedicated schools grant (DSG). We chose them because:
- they provided us with both simple and more complex statement types
- both are available digitally
- they contain links to GOV.UK guidance
We did this to see whether their content and structure were consistent with what we found in adult allocations.
Investigating stats, systems and data
Next, to help identify the ‘key’ guidance, and inform our planned ideation session, we looked at:
- Google analytics results for the guidance identified in the audit
- the publishing process for guidance content on GOV.UK
- approaches taken by other DfE services that link to guidance
- information from the DfE help centre on links to guidance
High level findings
We found out the following about adult allocations guidance:
- the landscape is large and complex with multiple owners
- the guidance itself is also often complex, with:
- long reading times and higher reading ages
- circular journeys and page structures that have multiple links to the same pages
- sometimes, it can be difficult to understand the contents of guidance from the title alone
- 'key' guidance was identified as including funding rules, technical guidance on allocations, and guidance around process such as timescales and changes
When looking at the non-adult scalability examples, we found:
- there are broad consistencies in the types of guidance available, but some differences in structure
- the 'key' guidance pages identified by content owners are linked from the current statements
- one of the 'key' guidance pages did not feature in the top 5 pages used by providers, according to the analytics information
In both cases we saw there is a collection page that contains all the 'key' guidance (along with other, less relevant information).
Next steps
We wanted to hear directly from providers about how they use 'key' guidance, so we are running a short round of unmoderated research to further evidence our findings.
We will then take these findings into an ideation session, to help us answer the question: how might we allow providers to access relevant guidance from a data-driven statement?