Course: User Research in Government: Developing Further

In this step, we will explore some of the key principles of trauma-informed user research in detail. Safeguarding In step 2.5, we learned about general safeguarding principles that user researchers …

User research often involves hearing people’s real-life experiences, which may include moments of distress, vulnerability, or past trauma. Even if participants do not explicitly share these experiences, you must always …

Safeguarding should always be proactive – safety must be a key part of your user research planning to minimise the risk of harm. However, there will be times when you …

Now that we’ve explored the core principles of ethical research, let us examine these in the context of government user research. In government, user research often involves potentially very sensitive …

In this video, our user researchers share advice for new and junior researchers who may be unfamiliar with important topics, such as ethics and safeguarding, on how they can learn …

This week, we will learn about ethical research practices. We will discuss the importance of safeguarding before, during and after research sessions, and the how to take a trauma-aware approach …

Congratulations! You have reached the end of Week 1. What you learned this week This week, we learned about different tools and concepts in user research, including user needs, stories …

Roadmaps are communication tools that are used to keep everyone in the team on track with tasks and priorities. It is a living document that is shared among the team …

A journey map, also known as a user journey map, tracks each step a user takes as they go through a service. Journey mapping helps teams understand how users interact …

An empathy map is a way of visually organising research findings to easily determine what users are thinking and feeling. This makes it easier to discover areas of stress, doubt, …

Jobs-to-be-done, or JTBD, is a theory developed by American academic and business consultant Clayton Christensen in 2006. It helps understand why users choose one product or service over another. Simply …

User stories communicate information about users and their needs in more specific ways than high-level statements of user needs. As user researchers, we need to be able to communicate information …

In this step, we will build on what we covered in our introductory course, by revisiting roadmaps. We will also introduce two new concepts – empathy maps, and journey maps. …

In step 1.4, we introduced you to user personas. In this step, we will explore personas in more detail, and also introduce you to another type of user profile, called …