Design with users
Design with users
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What is designing with users?
A key part of building services is understanding who the users are and how they interact with government. It is also important to consider user needs, conduct ongoing testing with users to guide design, and be responsive to changes.
Why is this important?
Involving users throughout the entire process will allow you to build a more user-centric, intuitive and easy-to-use service. Services need to be simple and consistent with users’ needs and expectations.
How to do it
These are suggested steps on how to design with users. Depending on where you are in your process, you might not need to follow every step.
Discover
- Determine your users. Determine who your users are so you know exactly who you’re building for. Users could be anyone who uses your service, including clients, staff or the public.
- Develop a research plan. Develop a research plan detailing your objectives, where you will recruit your users and how you will engage with them. Make sure to document how you’ll approach consent, privacy, compensation, ethical considerations, cultural sensitivities, and how you will use the data and safeguard personal information.
- Do user experience (UX) research. Do UX research to learn about user needs. Take a holistic approach and opt for qualitative methods like field studies, user interviews or diary studies. Look for patterns across goals, behaviours, skills, attitudes and environments.
- Work with a diverse sample of users. Engage with users from a diverse range of backgrounds. Consider factors like sex, gender, age, disability, education, ethnicity, economic status, geography (including rurality), language, race, religion and sexual orientation.
Build
- Develop user personas. Use your data to develop a few user personas. This will help you develop a product that resonates with your users and gives them what they truly want.
- Build journey maps. Build journey maps to see the actions, barriers and emotions users experience when completing a task. Use this to guide you in designing your product and improving key interaction points across channels.
- Build a service blueprint. Build a service blueprint to see the flow of actions that different roles (human or entities) do to support users. This will give you a visual reference of how front-stage and back-stage processes interact with each other.
- Develop a product design. Use the insights you developed to inform the design of your product. Incorporate feedback mechanisms and principles that are user-centric, accessible and inclusive.
Test
- Build wireframes. Build wireframes that map out your product tasks from start to finish. Look out for any areas of friction in the process and make sure users have the information they need – not what you think they should know.
- Do usability testing. Once you have a prototype, do some usability testing to see how easily users can accomplish various tasks when using your product. Look for indicators of bias and ways to eliminate unintended consequences to users. It’s important to test with more than one user. Recruit a sample size of 5–10 users that reflect the needs of your audience. You can adjust depending on the complexity of your product.
Monitor and iterate
- Use your performance metrics. After implementation, use your established performance metrics to get data on usability. Use quantifiable data sources like key performance indicators (KPIs), operational data, web analytics, usability testing and user feedback.
- Iterate and improve your service frequently. Iterate and improve your service as new information comes in. Do this by making incremental improvements on a regular basis – not large time-consuming moves. Go back to your users if needed.
Resources
Principles
UX design principles to adopt in your product development.
Consideration
Things to keep in mind
- Privacy and consent
- Gender-based Analysis Plus
- Speak to your department’s Privacy Division and Values and Ethics Division for information on research practices you need to follow
Tools and resources
Practical resources to help you through your processes.
Case studies
Talent
Skills to have on your team.
- UX research
- Data analysis
- UX design
- Service design
GC policy instruments
GC Communities and Training
Communities of practice GC employees can join.
Help us improve
This work is iterative, and we will continue to improve on it based on your feedback.
Share your thoughts and suggestions by email: servicedigital-servicesnumerique@tbs-sct.gc.ca
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