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SDinGov 2025

9 of the 10 blog authors posing and smiling at SDinGov in Edinburgh, with Arthur's Seat (a famous hill) in the background

SDinGov 2025

Something special happens in a small corner of Edinburgh every year. When the comedy fans and culture vultures dissipate after the summer’s festival, a new mob comes to town. Instead of the echoes of laughter and applause, something else fills …

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Day 3, Futures Academy: Using research to inspire ideas

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 27 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects
Sketching ideas

Great to see new faces at this morning’s stand up. The team are looking forward to seeing more members of Corporate Development and the wider organisation at tomorrow’s stand up and Friday’s show and tell. Our first activity was to …

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Day 2, Futures Academy: Understanding the user need

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 26 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects
Documenting the user research findings

Today was all about user research. We started the morning with a ‘stand up’ with the team and senior managers from corporate development. This 15 minute conversation is one of the daily tools of agile working, the idea being that …

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Day 1, Futures Academy: Understanding the problem

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 25 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects
Day 1 of the design sprint

Today we started the one-week design sprint. We learnt about framing problems, mapping services from a user perspective and identifying pain points and opportunities. It's been a great first day. We also shared the brief that the team are going …

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Introducing the Futures Academy

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 22 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects
Futures Academy sprint - June 2018

If we want to create public services fit for the 21st century, we have to give our staff the tools to make it happen. That’s why we’re trialling an initiative called the Futures Academy, a learning experience that gives staff …

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Show and tell notes: 20 June

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 20 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Show and tells
Show and tell June 20 2018

This week’s show and tell focussed on things we’re doing to better understand our users. Nic Ward and Helen West presented the User testing lab workshops they, and other members of ECC, have been doing and James Pallister & Sheila …

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Understanding the ‘why’: testing in the lab

Posted by: Helen West, Posted on: 11 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects, User research
User testing in progress

This week, we're in the user testing lab, in an effort to better understand why our users act the way they do. This involves watching how people actually behave when using our websites

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Show and tell notes - 6 June

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 11 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Show and tells
Accessibility show and tell

This week’s show and tell included sessions on website accessibility and the Futures Academy project, as well as some discussions around work already published by the service design team. We were also trying out a new, slightly roomier venue in …

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We're all user researchers now

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 4 June 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects, User research
A whiteboard showing forthcoming carer's groups across the county, identified for user testing" width="1417" height="1890" /> A whiteboard showing forthcoming carer's groups across the county, identified for user testing

Over the past few weeks, the content designers on the Service Design team have been rewriting parts of the Essex County Council websites. It’s about trying to understand what people are looking for, and working out how best to communicate that, in the most economical way possible.

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It’s live! The first pages of our content redesign

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 29 May 2018 - Categories: How we work, Our projects
The new paying for care pages on Essex.gov.uk

In early March we started the process of reviewing and testing the content of a chunk of the information advice and guidance on the Essex.gov.uk and Living Well websites. Last week we published the first batch of pages that went through that process.

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Show and tell notes - 23 May 2018

Posted by: Nicholas Ward, Posted on: 25 May 2018 - Categories: About the team, Our projects, Show and tells
20 people watching a presentation

At this week’s show and tell we heard about 2 pieces of work that showcased the ‘test, learn and improve’ approach that we try to take to all of our work.

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