An Opencast content design team conducted a thorough content audit of veteran-facing content into one workstream. And an agile multidisciplinary team came together to design and iterate prototypes to test with users in a parallel workstream.
The two teams liaised constantly as insights from the audit would inform design work – and insights from research in the design workstream would inform content recommendations.
The Opencast team investigated both a signposting tool and referral service for veterans to meet the OVA’s business requirements and user needs, as well as conducting a thorough content audit of the Veterans’ Gateway and all veteran-facing content on GOV.UK.
The UCD team conducted extensive research with users and organisations by:
- testing designs with veterans and their family members, online and in-person
- collaborating with OVA, Ministry of Defence and other organisations that provided veteran support for their input and feedback
- running surveys with both end users and organisations to back qualitative research with quantitative data.
Users liked aspects of the signposting tool for its ability to filter information and find results specific to their needs. The referral service was more contentious. Users were reluctant to enter their data and unclear as to who it would be shared with. They preferred the option to choose who they engaged with and initiate the process themselves.
There were also feasibility issues for both the OVA and other organisations that delivered veteran services. Some would struggle to meet the demand that increased traffic from a GOV.UK-hosted service would create. As well as varying resources, they also had very different data requirements, eligibility criteria and other variables that would make designing a one-size-fits-all referral service almost impossible to deliver without change.
From a product perspective, the discovery phase identified two key problem areas:
- the impact of withdrawing support provided by the Veterans’ Gateway was unclear.
- the experience for users and referral partners was problematic, with uneven and repetitive referral experiences leading to frustration.
The alpha phase of the work that followed therefore focussed on two workstreams:
- auditing Veterans’ Gateway and GOV.UK veteran-facing content, leading to a migration/improvement plan.
- exploring the feasibility of creating a signposting tool and/or referral service on GOV.UK that will help users to find and access support more easily.
Because of the vulnerability of some of the veterans seeking support through the gateway, user research in this area was challenging and sensitive. Our findings revealed a lack of strong desirability for a referral service. Additionally, Opencast’s technical and business analysis identified risks and concerns related to eligibility for referrals. So, the Opencast team redirected its efforts towards developing a signposting and directory of services tool.
The alpha phase saw the Opencast team focus exclusively on testing a directory solution to help veterans to find information and support in one place. This meant that:
- there would be no need to transfer data, reducing data risks for the OVA
- the tool would not be limited to a single user group. Family members and those working in veteran support services would be able to use it
- users would be able to find relevant information and use it in a way that works for them
- users would be able to see other organisations that could support them in one place and filter by location and categories of support.
The eventual solution chosen to meet the challenge was using the GDS-built finder – a tool for creating searchable directories of information, with many examples across GOV.UK. The Opencast team worked with teams responsible for the content and tested out bespoke versions of the tool, as well as the standard functionality of the off-the-shelf finder.
Opencast’s software development team had initially worked on the assumption that it would be building a platform from the ground up, hosted on the Cabinet Office’s AWS account. This would include a website and a small backend to store and retrieve data for the front end.
The Opencast team was asked to analyse existing technology and brought in GDS finders as a comparison. This included analysing the functionality of GDS finders and comparing results to a bespoke build.
Whilst a bespoke tool could deliver additional functionality and could scale in future, the GDS finder had existing infrastructure, analytics and security and could provide a more cost-effective approach for the client. This led the client and project team to conclude that this would be the best approach, particularly for delivering a minimum viable product in the tight timescales available.
Recognising that the finder could fulfil most user needs, and offered a more cost-effective solution, the decision was made to proceed with the off-the-shelf finder. Its software would allow documents and data to be stored and easily searchable from a website. The GDS finder could also meet most of the user needs outlined during user research. It was relatively simple to use and displayed the information clearly.
The overall feature set of the GDS finder had to this point been poorly documented, which had made it challenging to determine the suitability of the tool. After researching other finders and comparing their feature sets, it became clear that the existing finder did have the potential to do more.
Opencast produced a list of recommended features for GDS, with an explanation of why they would be useful and how they could stop duplication of work across government departments. These included having more sophisticated options filtering, a map to search for organisations, and adding images on the page listing organisations that could help.
The Opencast team continued working closely with the OVA and organisations to design a robust onboarding process, with back-end processes allowing organisations to submit and maintain their own listings. The OVA’s policy and legal requirements needed to be communicated clearly to these users to manage expectations around governance and liability.
