Skip to main content
GOV.UK

Blog User research in government

Organisations:
Civil Service

Updating the User Researcher role in the Capability Framework

Blocks spelling the word skill. A column chart above the blocks illustrating the growth of skills over time

Updating the User Researcher role in the Capability Framework

Those of you with eagle eyes will have noticed the ’user researcher’ role in the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework, published by the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), has recently been updated. This blog post shares some of the background and thinking behind the changes, and highlights some of the things it means for user researchers working in government.

Read more of Updating the User Researcher role in the Capability Framework

User research for government services: 8 strategies that worked for us

Posted by: John Waterworth, Posted on: 21 January 2015 - Categories: Agile, Ethos
User research wall

The programme to redesign and rebuild 25 exemplar services is now nearly 2 years old. We have 8 services live and 15 services in different stages of beta.

Read more of User research for government services: 8 strategies that worked for us - 4 comments

Using unmoderated research with eye-tracking

Posted by: Cath Richardson, Posted on: 17 December 2014 - Categories: Case studies, Tips and techniques
Eye tracking in the GDS user research lab

Earlier this year we released the ‘Services and information’ page, a new way to access all services and information published by an organisation on GOV.UK.

Read more of Using unmoderated research with eye-tracking - 3 comments

How we improved the sound in our user research lab

Posted by: Jonathan Rodriguez, Posted on: 10 December 2014 - Categories: User research infrastructure, User research lab
GDS user research lab, improving the sound quality - Jonathan Rodriguez

We had a couple issues with the sound in our lab's research studio - the space in which we research with users - which we’ve dramatically improved. In this post, I’ll share what was causing those problems and how we fixed them.

Read more of How we improved the sound in our user research lab - 2 comments

Skills Funding Agency: using cartoons to bring research to life

Posted by: Vanessa Clynes, Posted on: 3 December 2014 - Categories: Tips and techniques
Skills Funding Agency cartoon by Vanessa Clynes

Cartoons are a great way to help your colleagues identify with your users, and you don’t have to be an artist to make them work.

Read more of Skills Funding Agency: using cartoons to bring research to life - 8 comments

How HMRC got a whole team involved in planning user research

Posted by: David Travis, Posted on: 26 November 2014 - Categories: Team sport, Tips and techniques
HMRC's multidisciplinary team planning a usability test

On a recent project in HMRC’s Digital Delivery Centre in Newcastle, we wanted to encourage everyone on the design team to get involved in planning the user research.

Read more of How HMRC got a whole team involved in planning user research - 3 comments

We’re hiring user researchers

Posted by: Leisa Reichelt, Posted on: 18 November 2014 - Categories: Jobs
GOV.UK affinity sorting

If you’re passionate about helping organisations see the world from the end users’ point of view, we'd love to hear from you.

Read more of We’re hiring user researchers

How to make your user research video clips 'speak louder'

Posted by: Martin Storey and Kevin McHale, Posted on: 13 November 2014 - Categories: Tips and techniques

If you want to make sure that people really get the message from your user research video clips, take the time to add subtitles.

Read more of How to make your user research video clips 'speak louder' - 3 comments

Doodles on why doing user research in the right place matters

Posted by: Naintara Land, Posted on: 5 November 2014 - Categories: Ethos, Research stories
Whilst we're busy making things...

I've been thinking (and doodling).

Read more of Doodles on why doing user research in the right place matters - 1 comment

Anatomy of a good sticky note

Posted by: Leisa Reichelt, Posted on: 29 October 2014 - Categories: Analysis, Tips and techniques
Perfect user research sticky note

For many of our teams, the 'unit of data' in qualitative user research is the sticky note - or, more precisely, units of information captured onto sticky notes.

Read more of Anatomy of a good sticky note - 6 comments

How user research feeds into design patterns

Posted by: Will Roissetter, Posted on: 22 October 2014 - Categories: Design patterns, Team sport
Sewing patterns

We’ve made our design patterns publicly available in the Service Design Manual, where anyone can take GOV.UK elements and combine them to meet common user needs when creating public services.

Read more of How user research feeds into design patterns
Previous page
  • Page 1
  • …
  • Page 11
  • Page 12
  • Page 13
  • …
  • Page 16
Next page

Related content and links

User research in government

This blog showcases the projects user researchers are working on across government in the UK.

It's what we're learning and thinking about and a place for us to share case studies and project updates.

Resources

Government Service Design Manual: resources for user researchers

Events and training in the user-centred design community

Categories

Sign up and manage updates

  • Email
  • Atom

Useful links

  • All GOV.UK blogs
  • All GOV.UK blog posts
  • GOV.UK
  • All departments
  • Accessibility statement
  • Cookies
All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated
© Crown copyright