Content designer: Ivy Halstead-Dawber
Interaction designer: Steve O'Connor
Our current task list on DfE Connect has all the individual tasks in one long list. This leads to a few potential problems for users, such as
- the date column is too generic due to having different types of tasks together in one list - some have a due date, others might have a release date
- a long page which will grow even longer as we add more services and tasks
- the list is hard to scan when looking for something specific
- we cannot add supporting information for tasks
- we cannot create relationships between tasks
Current DfE Connect task list 
Grouping tasks
When we analysed the list of tasks, it was clear that many of them are related and could be grouped by activity or category.
We therefore want to test grouping the tasks together in this way to see if this solves the current and future issues.
Each group of tasks would have their own content page, titled as the specific activity.
Names of things
In the current design, we have one level of 'thing' - tasks.
In the new design, called the Action Based Model, there are 3 levels of 'things':
- categories, such as finance or governance
- grouped action, such as annual accounts or school census
- tasks, such as submit your annual accounts or complete the summer school census
After discussion, we decided to put forward a design in this first round of testing that renamed these things to:
- categories, such as finance or governance
- tasks, such as annual accounts or school census
- jobs to do, such as submit your annual accounts or complete the summer school census
This changes what a 'task' is between the designs. We will look to see if this is confusing for users.
Revised homepage to test
We created a design for the homepage to use in testing. The includes new sections and a rough 50/50 split between exploring or viewing a list. We wanted to test with this to see if there are any areas that users are most drawn to or want to see on the homepage.
While this is a very busy layout and overall design, we discussed and decided it was a good idea to include everything to help us determine which areas were most important for users.
Task pages
We created a design template for the task pages where jobs to do that are part of that task can be found.
The main areas on the page are:
- jobs to do - individual jobs that relate to the main task
- guidance and support - statutory guidance, advice, services or articles on gov.uk that relate to the action
- related tasks - any tasks that the user needs to do before or after this one are linked here
Jobs to do
We listed all the jobs related to the main task in this section. Opening dates and guidance updates have been removed or included in the guidance and support section.
The date a job can be started is added in the end column rather than having it as a separate job as there is no action for the user to take on an opening date.
Listing the jobs to do in this format also allows us to add a description underneath the link when supporting information is needed.
Task management
We added a drop down to allow users to mark tasks as 'in progress' or 'done'.
The drop down component changes colour based on selection to make use of the tag component's palette in order to make it easier to see which jobs need attention.
Guidance and support
The guidance and support section includes tags to highlight when an update is due or when there has been an update. We know this is important information for our users.
It also allows us to remove guidance updates from the jobs to do list which enables users to see only jobs that require an action on their part.
Next steps
We're testing this version with users alongside the current version to see if grouping the tasks together in this way is intuitive and works for users.
We will then iterate the designs further if testing shows that users do like this model.