What’s in a name
One of the challenges for any service is finding a name. We need to think about the words that users will use so they can find our service more easily when they search online. And, use language that makes sense - to describe the thing the service does or is.
Service we’re working on
The Service assessment service is an internal service. It will only be used by DfE staff and contractors.
During our alpha phase, our working title was ‘Assure your service’, as we felt this covered more than just assessments. We’re starting with discovery peer reviews but will be building the service out to include alpha and beta assessments, then mocks and re-assessments.
The service will be made up of 3 products – but more of this later.
What we learned from user research
We ran 6 rounds of usability research to test the service in alpha.
We also ran a round of comprehension testing around guidance for getting a discovery peer review. Plus, worked with stakeholders and users to build current and future journey maps.
At each stage we asked users:
How they would describe the service
What they thought of our draft name, ‘Assure your service’
Research participants had mixed views on ‘assure’
The service has 3 user groups: delivery teams, assessors, and the service assessment team.
We also spoke to business partners, but research showed they are a more indirect user group as will not be using the service – but it would be beneficial for them to know about the guidance.
One of the challenges users had with the term ‘assure’ is that assurance in DfE is wider than just service assessments and peer reviews.
‘As a product or deliver manager there are lots of other levels of assurance - not this, it's not everything.’
‘Some multidisciplinary teams think if we just do an assessment then we'll be ok - but it's not enough, assurance is more than this service.’
‘Assure your service is confusing.’
The service assessment plus team, DfE and xgov colleagues that work across assurance and assessments repeatedly referred to ‘assessments’ and not ‘assure’.
‘It's hard! Booking and managing your assessment? Booking and managing your assessment... something like that...’
And service assessors told us:
I have a ‘problem with 'assure' not a plain English word... could be misheard. This is about booking an assessment. Assessment should be in the title.’
Some assessors also said:
'assure a service is true to all user groups.’
‘'Assure a service' change 'your' to 'a' as not your service when you are the panel’
Picking the right name for the service is important to its success. It means that users can find the service more easily when they search online and understand what it does, then easily decide whether to use it.
What we learned from desk research
We looked at Google Trends, Analytics and other government services to explore naming services. References include All Service Assessments and Self Certifications and Naming your service in the GOV.UK Service Manual.
Google Trends told us that ‘service assessment’ is the most searched term compared to ‘service assurance’. Our data point example was 29 January to 4 February 2023 when 10 users searched ‘service assurance’ but 100 users searched ‘service assessment'.
We then looked at the same timescale, but included ‘assure your service’ in the mix. Google Trends showed that for the same period 0 people searched this term.
Now, we are aware that we are building an internal service, so what does it matter in a way what external users are searching?
So we also looked at top page visits in Analytics for Apply the Service Standard in DfE, where ‘service assessments’ is consistently in the top 10 pages.
Finally, we looked at GOV.UK services. Most of us have read Lou Downe’s Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns, but to help us with our research we found services that are just-called-the-thing-they-are.
They include:
Analysing research and looking at the service and products as a whole
User research, content design and interaction and service design analysed the findings.
We looked at the evidence we’d gathered: ‘assure’ is more than just service assessments - users do not like this word, Google Trends and Analytics show that ‘service assessment’ is a consistently popular search term or visited page.
We concluded that the service name as we move into beta should be the Service assessment service. It uses language users use and search online.
Products that make up the Service assessment service
The service will cover service assessments, discovery, alpha and beta peer reviews, and in the future, reassessments.
Product 1: Service assessment service, which includes Book, Manage and Assess a peer review or service assessment
Product 2: Apply the Service Standard in DfE
Product 3: PowerBi reporting
What’s next
As we move into beta, and start to build the service, we will continue to test and look at research to understand how these names work for our users and whether they are easy to find and understand.