This week our eyes started to wander over the horizon to the post go-live world. Having worked so frantically on getting our minimum viable product ready, it’s really refreshing to be able to get stuck in to some new challenges.
Content
Caroline A’s finished the gargantuan task of migrating the Environment and planning content to the new site, and is now drilling down to see how that content can be improved.
Hannah’s also finished the Business section, and is now investing time in some discovery work.
Caroline M’s been pitching in all over flagging typos and broken links on the new site and putting our new search functionality through its paces.
Sheila’s also been racing about polishing her Education pages, creating a site map for the new site and talked through some step-by-step functionality with Adult Social Care.
Also excitingly, she’s started to look at bringing our Local Offer microsite over to essex.gov.uk. This is a huge piece of work, taking in some of our wider directories work.
I’ve also started to think about bringing our Coroners microsite into the essex.gov.uk fold.
Having a single site for Essex was always at the heart of our website plan, so it’s really exciting to get this work underway.
Devs
Martin’s been working at speed squashing bugs and implementing fixes all over the shop. There’s been quite a few quick and easy fixes that came out of our Shaw Trust accessibility audit, and also some stuff to make our showpiece step-by-step content shine.
Service design
Nic presided over the last full team day of the Adult Social Care Information, Advice and Guidance project, pulling together all the things they’ve learned.
He’s also been kicking off the next phase of the common service patterns work, using the ‘check something’ pattern to prototype two new service experiences.
The team will be testing the patterns, service prototypes, and library of guidance all at once. So there’ll be plenty to learn and do.
Excitingly, all the new team members are going to be involved in this, with elements of content, design and user research.
Bhupinder’s been back at the Transformation Academy in Ipswich and working with Ben to finalise the Management Acceleration Pack. This will be key for making sure managers across the council have an understanding of the way we work.
She rounded off the week with the dementia journey maps, synthesising the experience of people as they go through process of getting a diagnosis.
Product
Matt’s been chasing, nudging and planning to make sure that go-live is a success and that we all have plenty of tickets to keep us busy thereafter.
User research
Georgiana’s been busy reviewing the research we’ve already done on Education, working this up into a document that will guide our Education discovery. This is a massive area, teeming with facets and quirks, so strong research is crucial.
She’s also been involved in the service pattern planning.
The whole user research team pulled together for the second phase of our accessibility audit. The Shaw Trust are coming in next week to present their findings in a bit more detail, so that will be really interesting.
Team highlight
With go-live looming, across the team and Tech Services, our collective socks have been worked off.
We know where we need to be, and we’re going to get there.
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