Content designer: Daren Bristow
Interaction designer: Hugo Altendorf
These changes continue our work for the first iteration of the designs for task grouping.
Start page
We've updated the start page text to include the recognised school business professional (SBPs) roles from the user groups. This was important to users during testing.
Homepage
Date ordered list
The list has been created to give the user a simple but detailed view of upcoming tasks as well as tasks from the previous 12 months. We have added month and year headings to separate the information for easier scan reading. This also mirrors the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) calendar that our users are already familiar with and often refer to.
The items in the date ordered list display the action needed (subtask) and its parent task along with the appropriate date. Each subtask will have an available or due date, or both. When both are present the due date will be displayed as it is more important to our users.
The parent task text is blue to reflect the gov.uk link style to highlight that this is the destination the user will go to when clicked. We have also included a hover state to indicate the whole component is clickable. The whole interaction of this element follows the DfE design system guidelines, particularly the DfE card.
Filters
School Business Professionals (SBPs) have specialised roles. To make it easier for them to find relevant tasks, we’ve added the ability to filter the list by phase of education and task categories with options to add more in the future if users express a need.
Filters are a step towards personalising content based on the different types of school. Which aligns with our user need: I want to see information that is relevant to me and my school.
Explore tasks
The explore functionality has been built with our two user needs foremost in our mind: Finding tasks directly and understanding what’s coming next. This has tested well with our users making effective use of both the explore tasks links and the date ordered list.
Navigation
We’ve added some navigation links to the right-hand side of the page to allow users to find their tasks directly. It also allows them to look at similar tasks within the same category area.
After several rounds of testing, we’ve added additional links to previous tasks and a contact us link. Users were not always finding the link that’s in the footer to contact DfE so having it in this list has tested well.
Task pages
Task page content has been updated, working with subject matter experts to ensure accurate dates and descriptions.
Here both due dates and available dates are shown as part of a subtask.
If the subtask requires the user to complete the action in a different place, the link will signpost them directly to that service. If that service also uses DfE sign-in the user will not have to log in again.
Footer design and links
The footer has been designed using the GDS standard layout and is consistent with DfE services. We’ve created versions of the accessibility statement and cookie pages to ensure they match our service
Support page
Our support page will continue to provide guidance to our users. In the future we will have in-page guidance, relevant to each page the user visits. Currently we are linking to a separate maintained support page.