Your persona
Your responses indicate you’ve got a firm grounding in user-centred working practices. As someone in a position of leadership, you may find yourself navigating the complexities of large-scale projects, ensuring that the services and products your team delivers resonate with the diverse audience your government serves. How is user-centred working viewed by your peers? Perhaps there’s an opportunity for you to share your knowledge and work with others to bring more user-centred best practices into the work they do. You could be well-placed to act as a mentor or offer peer support in this area, thereby being instrumental in fostering a user-centred culture more widely.
Build your skills and knowledge
Think of an area you’d love to get a user's perspective (the public) on. What points would you like to cover or questions you’d like to pose? Draft talking points or user questions. Get feedback from a colleague with more experience. Redraft and refine.
Practice interview skills: develop your interviewing skills by trying them out with colleagues or friends. If possible, identify an opportunity to be involved in a workshop.
Get time to talk through UCD work that's been done with colleagues who were involved. Was there anything they needed more support with from a leadership perspective?
Check that your team has access to the tools and tech they need. Play around with prototyping tools like Figma or Miro, so you're comfortable with the functionality should you find yourself positioned to contribute.
Arrange accessibility training sessions for your team, including developers, designers, and content creators. Encourage them to obtain accessibility certifications if applicable.
Set Accessibility Goals: Define accessibility goals and metrics that align with your department's mission and values. Communicate these goals to your team and hold them accountable.
Create a community of practice
Who in your network is doing a good job of centring users and gaining insights to meet their needs? Could you get some time with them to share ideas and hear more about their approaches? Even better, if they’re a peer in government, maybe there’s even an opportunity to collaborate.
The Apolitical Q&As are a great place to connect with other community members. Conversations such as those on this thread about keeping focus on user needs bring ideas and perspectives together. What might you contribute?
Keep exploring
If you’re looking for inspiration for structured skill development, take a look at our Learning Plans, where we have stitched together disparate educational resources into rich, diverse, cohesive and enlightening learning journeys which can have a transformative impact on both our professional and personal lives.
Articles such as What is user-centred design without user research? appear regularly. Keep an eye on the Article pages and consider commenting under those that speak to you.
Apolitical regularly hosts events with thought leaders speaking on all kinds of digital topics. Keep an eye on what’s coming up and, in the meantime, catch up on recordings such as Innovating with design methods in the public service.
Ready for some more structured learning? How to Build a Digital Government Service could inspire you. Section 2 is particularly relevant — it’s all about user experience and user interviews in a ‘discovery’ phase.
What's next?
Not sure if this is the right persona for you? This diagnostic and its suggested outcome have been designed for illustrative purposes and may not reflect your level of awareness or competency.
Find a guide to the statements covered plus the scenario questions here: User-Centred Working Self-Assessment and Scenario Summaries.
Explore the other personae using the links below:
Leadership:User-Centred Working Explorer, User-Centred Working Consolidator, User-Centred Working Trailblazer
Non-Leadership:User-Centred Working Explorer, User-Centred Working Consolidator, User-Centred Working Trailblazer
⬅️ Government Skills Impact Tracker | Digital and Data Skills Hub ➡️