Prototyping and user research
Following last week's initial ideation, we started this week by completing the prototype needed for our third round of user research.
Having learned a lot in round two about the content users found useful in the context of ransomware, we were keen to explore whether these findings could be applied to more proactive, less technical topics and so we focused on the topic of password security.
We also wanted to further explore the need we'd identified around users wanting content to support conversations between technical and non-technical colleagues; addressing this both through the types of content included in the prototype and by interviewing a group of users together, to better understand how they collaborate.
We've faced an ongoing challenge to talk to low maturity schools throughout Alpha. This challenge persisted in round three, and is something we're conscious of needing to address as we move forward. The team is looking at how we can better engage these schools, so that we can validate whether our approach is helpful to them.
Technical solution
Our Business Analyst has been busy for a little while now understanding the functional requirements (as we know them so far!) of the self serve solution and exploring what the options for fulfilling these requirements are.
This week we reviewed the output of this investigation, looking at the functionality provided by Whitehall, Contentful and Zendesk, and how these solutions have been used by other teams across DfE. We now have a better understanding of what might be most suitable, though there are a couple of areas requiring further exploration before we land on a formal recommendation.
Content audit
We firmed up our understanding of the existing cyber advice landscape, including which topics we have low, medium and high levels of content for across DfE and third party sources.
Alpha re-focus
Following feedback from our first assessment meeting we had a little re-focus. The team has been finding it a challenge to address the range of content user needs presented by Plan Tech and Standards as well as those of user journeys not involving either of these products/services. In future sprints we'll therefore be focusing on the standalone / direct-to-user element of the self serve product.
Next week we have limited capacity due to half terms holidays, but will be looking to...
- Complete synthesis of round three user research
- Deep dive analysis of user research so far to get insight to feed into development of a taxonomy and navigation model, and clarify what needs/problems we have validated and where we still have gaps
- Progress information architecture definition by exploring the structures defined in other workstreams and determining how (through what research methods) we can get a better understanding of users' mental models in order to define a taxonomy and navigation model
- Gather feedback from Standards, Content, Plan Tech & SMEs on the latest prototype to understand value add and how well this aligns to their thinking