ILF Scotland provides grants to people with complex needs so that they can lead fulfilling lives. The funding is over above what they might get from their Local Authority as part of their care package.
Task
ILF needed an accessible form for their new online service. They had a limited budget and didn’t have an in-house User-Centred Design team.
After delivering an online service for social workers they asked us to do Discovery work for a service where people can apply directly for funding.
The challenge: this was a small organisation that had limited experience of UX research and design. We needed to give them a value for money service that would fit into their existing work schedule.
Action
We set up an approach that would work for them:
- Regular meetings, with deadlines
- A prototype which we set up using the govuk prototyping kit
- A research plan, covering ethics, recruitment and analysis
We followed the Scottish Approach to Service Design to develop a user-centred service.
After we set up the prototype we scheduled usability testing with service users to improve the content and design. We tested this on social workers from local authorities.
For a citizen-facing application we scheduled a round of remote interviews with existing service users: people who had received ILF Scotland funding, a carer and some proxy service users (social workers).
We chose people who had existing funding as the service users have complex needs, can be extremely vulnerable, and can have learning difficulties.
We kept all the research participants anonymous. We stored the notes in a secure folder. After the research was completed and we’d analysed the notes we deleted these.
Result
We both worked part-time over around six months to deliver what they needed.
We attended bi-weekly stand-up meetings with the development team. If they had a query about the design or web accessibility we could answer it then. If any issues needed more attention they could assign us JIRA tickets.
We handed over the following:
- An end to end prototype which we’d tested on real people
- A User Research report with user needs and key themes
- A service map based on research
- An accessibility audit based on our evaluation of the build
They launched their new online application for social workers in spring 2024.