Overview
The first feature we started adding to the prototype after launching our controlled public beta was social worker roles and responsibilities.
Our aim was to create role profiles for child and family social worker of all levels to address some of the user and business needs identified in discovery. These included the need for social workers to:
- understand the steps they could take towards their next role
- feel confident the role they’re moving into is the right fit for them
- see guidance and information about career pathways and roles
Designing our first role page
The first page we designed was for the role of senior practitioner.
We sourced content from our own desk research of job ads, social worker websites, blogs and programme provider websites.
We structured the content based on feedback we got from rounds 1 and 2 of post-MVP user research. Users said the most important things they'd want to know about were:
- salary (included in our key facts section)
- day-to-day responsibilities (What you'll do)
- the skills required (Skills and knowledge)
- the level of experience required (How to become one)
We used the social worker page on the National Careers Service (NCS) website as a template for ours, including:
- a 'key facts' section with salary range and a summary of the role
- an accordion
- similarly titled sections
This was because we did not know at this stage whether the NCS would host this content with us linking to them. And if the NCS were to host it, we did not know whether we would be creating the content or they would.
We later spoke with NCS and it was agreed that it would be on our site and they would signpost to it.
What we found in testing
We tested the senior practitioner page in round 3 of post-MVP user research.
Users were asked to do a highlighting exercise (green = helpful content, red = unhelpful content) and talk through their reasoning.
Key facts section
The salary range seemed very broad to users, and the upper and lower ends did not align with their experience.
Some users thought the ‘Responsibilities’ section was not detailed enough and missed some key responsibilities. We intended this to be a brief summary of the role, but the title 'Responsibilities' may suggest we should list the key ones.
What you'll do section
The content in this section was seen as vague and lacking in detail.
Holding complex caseloads was seen as a key responsibility which is not included here. Users also wanted to know what makes a case 'complex'.
Users were not clear what 'supervising and mentoring' and ‘monitoring and assessing quality of work’ actually involves.
Some terminology like ‘stakeholders’ is not intuitive social worker language.
Overall, users felt it did not paint a picture of what their day-to-day in this role would look like.
Skills and knowledge section
Users felt we:
- conflated the content in this section with that in the What you'll do section
- did not mention enough of the skills required to do this role, and those we did were not detailed enough
- should explain what 'principles' they're expected to have a strong understanding of
They also thought ‘manage a complex caseload’ and ‘analyse complex situations’ are too similar.
What we’ll do next
Find out about salary ranges to make sure our content is accurate. We may also need to add more detail around how and why they vary, for example because of location, responsibilities and experience.
Talk to subject matter experts and get their feedback on our content and help us fill in the gaps identified in user testing.
Continue designing pages for each role, testing them and iterating based on user feedback.