We wanted to explore a new name for the service as School Account was not seen as representative of what we were doing, nor did it fit the Service Manual's guidance on naming your service.
We needed some context and to ensure we understood what we were naming. For example the School Account service has a set of user needs we can reference.
As a School Business Professional …
- I need to have everything that relates to DfE in one place so that I don't waste my time searching for information
- I want to see information that is relevant to my school(s) so that I don't waste time working out what's relevant to my school and what's not
- I need to know what tasks I legally must do so that I can ensure my school is compliant
- I need to keep up with the new information so that I can ensure my school is compliant and I am not missing any opportunities to improve our school
- I want to see all funding information in one place so that I don’t miss out an opportunity to get more money for my school.
We also had some user research findings that found out what users might call a service like this.
Using the information we had we ran a workshop where we explored:
- Related verbs
- The users of the service
- What the users are looking for
- What the users are dealing with
- The big seven (areas of work for users)
Following the GDS service naming guidance we then generated name ideas.
See the Lucid board for more details
Workshop output
We came out of the workshop with three names.
- Get information on School Business Manager tasks
- Keep updated about your school's finances
- View tasks and services for school business professionals
We discussed these as a team and iterated on these to have a list to test with users. They were:
- Plan your school finances
- Manage your school finances
- Organise your school finances
- DfE (Finance) Dashboard
User testing output
Voting results:
5 votes - Plan your school finances
5 votes - Manage your school finances
3 votes - Organise your school finances
1 vote - DfE (Finance) Dashboard
User comments:
All of the names sound condescending - def don't like organise
Talking down to someone - condescending - you can't do it, so we'll show you how to.
Misleading - it's more to do with reporting requirements - there is some best practice.Misleading - it's more to do with reporting requirements - there is some best practice.
Get some people's goats.
Conclusion
'Manage' had a stronger backlash, with some users stating a definite no to it. A key point made by few users was that 'your school finances' is not adequate. Another point made was around what the name isn't conveying.
The name testing is inconclusive.
No new name will be used until we know more about the users and the service development.