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Updating the User Researcher role in the Capability Framework

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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.

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Learning how people tag content

Posted by: Alan Maddrell, Posted on: 27 September 2016 - Categories: Case studies, Tips and techniques

The Finding Things team recently ran a mock tagging workshop. We did this to learn how content designers apply subject tags to content to say what it’s about.

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Help us find 50 people to test our panel sign up form

Posted by: Kate Towsey, Posted on: 9 September 2016 - Categories: User research infrastructure
Lots of people walking

A few months ago, we wrote about the user research panel we’re building for GOV.UK. Since then, a lot of work has been done: we built the panel, the alpha service assessment has been passed, and we’re now going into private …

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Using Activity Theory to build effective personas

Posted by: Tingting Zhao, Posted on: 6 September 2016 - Categories: Case studies, Tips and techniques

At the end of last year, the Performance Platform team completed a (re)discovery project. We wanted to look at how people use data to improve performance. As part of this project we used Activity Theory to build personas.

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We’re looking for a Head of User Research

Posted by: John Waterworth, Posted on: 13 July 2016 - Categories: Jobs
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This is a fantastic opportunity to build the government’s user research capability, and help make government services work well for all the people who need and use them.

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Doing discovery close to home

Posted by: Sarah Herman, Posted on: 22 June 2016 - Categories: Case studies, Service Assessment, Tips and techniques
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From February to April, the Standards team at GDS ran a discovery into the service assessment process. The aim was to understand what was working well and what was not working well.

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Cross-government meetup on Good Discovery

Posted by: John Waterworth, Posted on: 17 June 2016 - Categories: Conferences and events, Research stories

The topic for our cross government meetup in June was Good Discovery. We had a great turn out and 5 fantastic talks.

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Choosing the best methods to answer user research questions

Posted by: Lorna Wall, Posted on: 8 June 2016 - Categories: Case studies, Tips and techniques
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When they plan user research, most user researchers start with an objective (eg test the usability of a new online transaction), and probably some more specific research questions.

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We're building a GOV.UK user research panel

Posted by: Kate Towsey, Posted on: 2 June 2016 - Categories: User research infrastructure
Lots of people walking

We’ve been working on a project to build a user research panel for the GOV.UK user research team.

Read more of We're building a GOV.UK user research panel - 8 comments

Guest post: Learning about internal users at HS2

Posted by: Jeremy Foot, Tom Brown and Lior Smith, Posted on: 26 May 2016 - Categories: Case studies, Empathy, Popup research, Tips and techniques
A mini interview in progress

I expect you’ve already heard of High Speed Two (HS2). It will be the UK’s second high speed rail line, running North from London, initially to Birmingham. And the first main line railway to be built in the UK since …

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Cross government meetup: Research findings over the long term

Posted by: Jay Spanton, Posted on: 20 May 2016 - Categories: Conferences and events, Tips and techniques

Week-in and week-out user researchers communicate findings to teams and stakeholders. This is our stock-in-trade and we feel confident about it. But managing research over many months, or between teams rarely gets our focus.

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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.

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Government Service Design Manual: resources for user researchers

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