We wanted to make sure that the documents in our tasklist were arranged in an order that made sense to users.
So, we worked with them to understand what should go where.
Co-designing document order
We ran a workshop with users to understand what order made most sense (opens in new tab) to them.
We provided them with a few different options to spark discussion.
One list was alphabetical, one was chronological and another saw documents grouped into themes such as land documents and financial documents.
Users opted for the chronological order, with documents that are always used at the top and the optional documents beneath.
Putting things in the order that users do them
With the order of tasks in the Project kick-off section already in chronological order, this similar ordering for document tasks felt like a consistent approach to take.
When we ran user research for the first two sets of tasks in the task list, users broadly agreed and were happy that the ordering of tasks was logical and helpful.
However, throughout the discovery and further research, users commented that's no one project is ever the same.
Each project requires different combinations of documents, and tasks are started or completed at various times.
It all depends on the complexity of the project, and the response time of the school and their stakeholders.
While we've tried to put tasks in the order in which user typically do them, the task list is not prescriptive.
Not all documents are required for each project, so they can be marked as not applicable if necessary.
We've also removed the numbers from the task section headings.
We felt this could give an impression of having to tackle the tasks in particular order, but as we've learnt about the way caseworkers handle projects, it has become clear that projects are not methodical, linear processes.
Users can start a task whenever they have the information they need to do it. Tasks are not necessarily dependent on other tasks being completed before they can be started.
The prototype and the build reflect this.
What we'll do next
While this is all true now, things may change as we understand more about the other tasks in the project.
We'll apply this chronological approach to other tasks in the later part of the task list, but research may mean we have to re-evaluate that.