Your persona
Welcome to the world of user-centred working! From your responses, you’re likely starting out in this area. It might be that your role does not traditionally involve user research or developing and maintaining public services. You might even be a little unsure about how what you’re doing relates to user-centredness. It could be argued that almost everything eventually meets the needs of an end user, and even if the connection is a little unclear right now, the chances are by developing your understanding of how to be more user-centred, you’ll pick up ideas that could transfer to your own work or build empathy for and understanding of the work of other departments or how public are served or impacted by government.
Build your skills and knowledge
Who are the users that your department serves? Is there a public-facing element?
What sort of user research is going on or has been conducted? Take a little time on a thought exercise where you imagine what you’d ask of users if you had some time with them. What kind of topics would you cover? How would you frame the questions? If possible, share your notes with a more experienced colleague - or better still, compare your questions to real research that has been conducted.
Read up on the different phases of User-Centred Design. Are there any digital products or services being worked on at the moment? What phase are they in?
Search out case studies which exemplify how real examples of UCD have been implemented by your government and/or department. Could you get some time with colleagues who were involved?
Set a reminder to review the accessibility standards you’re working towards regularly. How does the work you’re producing measure up?
Create a community of practice
Can you get some time with whoever leads on user research? They might be able to share some invaluable insights. Even better, they might be happy for you to attend a user-research session (in an observational capacity) or even offer some informal mentoring.
The Apolitical Q&A pages have lots of examples of people starting out their exploration of what it means to meet the needs of their users. Topics such as What can governments do to ensure that engagement efforts are more diverse equitable and inclusive? bring together diverse voices.
Keep exploring
Love to listen? The UK Department of Work and Pensions has created a podcast about building better user experiences. There’s a transcript there, too.
Thinking about getting involved in user research but not sure where to start? How to: 7 tips for effective user research is a snappy introduction.
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.
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 ➡️