Course: User Research in Government: Getting Started

In this video, user researchers discuss their definition of user-centred design. User research informs user-centred design. User-centred design simply means design that puts users at the heart of decision-making. User-centred …

In this video, user researchers discuss the importance of inclusive research. Why is inclusive research important? Making a service inclusive and accessible to everyone must start with inclusive research. You …

As well as the Service Standard, in government we also adhere to the Government Design Principles. First published in 2012 and mostly recently updated in 2019, the Design Principles are …

In government, we have a strong mandate to do regular user research. Apart from the fact that user research saves us time and money in the long run by doing …

Welcome to Week 2! This week, we will learn about user research in the context of the UK government. We will learn about agile methods and the history of GOV.UK, …

Building GOV.UK required a significant shift in culture and working practices. From waterfall to agile Historically, the government approach to developing and delivering services followed the waterfall method: Services were …

Let’s briefly explore the history of GOV.UK. This is a screenshot of an old website called Directgov. Back in 2010, Directgov was the main UK government website. It was run …

GDS and GOV.UK set the standard for working in government and agile is now the main way of working when building services. But what is agile? What is agile? Agile …

User needs are tricky to define – sometimes it’s easier to explain what something is by saying what it’s not! A user need is not: a solution – this is …

Congratulations! You have reached the end of Week 1. What you learned this week This week we learned the basics: what are users, what is user research, and what are …

In this step, we will learn about how to write down user needs in a format that makes them easier to understand and communicate with the team. As we learned …

In this video, user researchers discuss user needs. User needs are the requirements a product or service must meet to ensure the user achieves their desired outcome. User researchers gain …

Team members will need different things from user research to help them do their job. It’s important to spend time with different team members to understand their experience of working …

Teams can look very different for a variety of reasons, including the size of your organisation and the service or product being built. In government, a service team is made …

In this video, user researchers discuss the essential skills needed for the role. User researchers come from a variety of backgrounds. They may have other research experience, such as market …