Discovery research suggested that users needed the toolkit to afford both linear (following the toolkit steps) and non-linear use (jumping straight to relevant resources). This is because some users may have already identified workload issues, be looking for ideas from other schools or revisiting the service. So in Alpha, we explored ways we could allow users to explore all the resources across the whole toolkit, without having to follow a step-by-step process.
What we did
We introduced a new component that allows users to do the following:
- search for specific resources that they already know they want to look at or use
- browse through the list of resources across all 3 steps in the toolkit
- filter results by resource topic or resource type
What we found
In usability testing, users liked having an overview of all the resources without having to commit to them, and found visual cues useful for digesting information and surfacing what they want a lot quicker. Users liked how this new design offered a quick way for them to assess usefulness of each resource without having to download anything.
As a result of our design exploration and user testing, we think this design gives a useful way for users to use the toolkit in a non-linear way.