Do we understand what our users need? This is one of the many questions we often ask ourselves as content designers. Working in a 'government bubble' means that from time to time we need to go out and seek to understand our users. By doing this our content becomes ever-evolving and continues to provide what our users want.
So, over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be conducting user research as part of the cross-government content transformation programme. This major plan aims to make it easier for users to understand and search for the information they want across all government departments.
For the Department of Health and Social Care, our user research will take on an assortment of individual interviews and group sorting sessions. We intend to speak to a range of individuals in the health sector, including patients, nurses, clinicians, workforce leads and policy teams.
You may be wondering what we hope to gain from this research. Well, depending on the findings, we’ll certainly be able to make informed decisions as we begin to make content improvements. The content team will also have a better understanding of our users’ priorities and it will help us consider any issues around accessibility.
A big part of this research will be the user insights from search terms and phrases used on GOV.UK. It’s particularly important for us as content designers, since what we publish and how we categorise content will help users find what they need.
Our research will help us to:
- understand users who are outside of government
- understand any cultural themes about our users and their individual journeys on GOV.UK
- identify some of the content challenges our users experience
If you’d like to hear about the results of our user research, please feel free to get in touch.