It’s been unusually quiet in E1 this week. We know what we need to do, and have been beavering through our own little lists of things to get sorted before the essex.gov.uk launch. But listen carefully, between the keyboards clacking, post it notes ripping and list ticking, just maybe, you can hear the sound of things starting to come together.
Service design
Bhupinder’s been working with the Transforming Adult Social Care team, who are thinking about what they’d like adult social care to look like. They spent some time crafting an alternative journey for an adult diagnosed with dementia. It’s exciting to see how these journeys move from ideation into something helping our residents in Essex.
Nic’s been cooking up ideas about how to prototype the ‘check something’ service design pattern. This is a really interesting stream of work, you can find out how we've arrived here on our service patterns blog posts.
He’s also been pulling together threads on the adult social care information, advice and guidance project. The discovery’s coming to an end in the next few weeks and there’s loads of ideas and insights to capture and develop.
There’s also been some interesting chats with the Service Communities team in GDS, exploring how we could collaborate around the essex.gov.uk platform.
User research
Ben sat in on the accessibility testing for essex.gov.uk that the Shaw Trust have been commissioned to do. This included users navigating the site with screen readers and users who only use keyboards. This is an invaluable chance to observe and ask questions.
Also, this week saw the Futures Academy Beta squad identify a project sponsor and area of focus for the next phase of their work. You can read more about their five day design sprint, that kicked off this work in their Futures Academy Beta blog post.
Devs
Martin’s been hard at it making sure our apps are on point with Tech Services. He also dropped in on the accessibility testing.
Purvi’s been working on redirects and making preparations for the launch with Tech Services.
Product
This week Helen planned a series of show and tells with our contact centre staff, so they’re up to speed on the new site as it launches.
She also started the mammoth task of communicating the changes in the law about accessibility. It sounds like she’s had a really good response, and lots of people around the organisation are ahead of the game on this.
Content
This week Hannah’s continued taking care of the business section, and is starting to get sign off on a couple of the sections she’s redesigned, which is great.
She also started building out some of her first pages in our CMS, which is always a good feeling.
She and Caroline A also had some good meetings with content owners, and continued to map out the sections of Business and Environment and Planning that will be redesigned after the new site is launched.
Caroline M’s been carrying on her work on the Contact us pages as well as migrating some pretty important stuff over to the Essex Highways site. Lots of this was around busgates, which can be quite contentious content to handle. She's also had a crack at amending our Brexit pages.
Sheila’s had meetings about school transport and early years learning, and got sign-off on a couple of other sections, including school attendance and SEND.
Collette's been wading through a torrent of emails and catch ups after her break in Vegas, and is picking up lots of threads that need to be tied up before we're ready to launch.
I’ve been working on the Registration pages, which has been tough, but I think they’re in a good place.
Team highlight
This week got a new user researcher. Georgiana brings a lot of expertise and enthusiasm, which is going to be vital as we strive to iterate and improve long beyond go-live.
If you’ve got any questions, or just want to say hi, email us: service.design@essex.gov.uk
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