Get to an answer

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Content design, Service design, User-centred design

The Customer Experience and Design (CX&D) team have created a new pattern called 'Get to an answer'. It makes it easy for user-centred design teams in the Department for Education (DfE) to build content that guides users to relevant information by answering a short series of questions.   Where this started  The project started with Support for care leavers. What support a care leaver is entitled to …

Creating 3 principles of informed consent for user research

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Accessibility, Collaboration, Community of Practice, Cross-government, digital inclusion, neurodiversity, user research, User-centred design

Informed consent is a process where an individual makes a choice whether to take part in research. They make this choice after a user researcher gives them information about what the research is about. Informed consent involves both communicating what …

Building relationships with gatekeepers to recruit participants

Posted by: , and , Posted on: - Categories: user research

User researchers (URs) conduct research to understand the needs of people that we are designing services for. URs have several routes to recruit participants. You can explore these further by reading these blog posts about recruitment strategies and managing biases …

How we’re providing real-time accessibility statements and issue management

Posted by: , , and , Posted on: - Categories: Accessibility, Cross-government, design

In late 2023, the Department for Education (DfE) DesignOps team noticed a recurring problem across the services DfE provided to users. Many of our digital services did not have accessibility statements, or had out-of-date, or incorrect statements. This issue made …

Learning from Accessibility Experts: A Day at the DfE Lab

Posted by: and , Posted on: - Categories: Accessibility, design, Service design, user research

On a crisp spring morning, user researcher Sree and interaction designer Claire travelled to Sheffield to visit the Department for Education’s Accessibility Lab. Their goal was to understand how digital services function for those who navigate the world differently. Inside …

Introducing the DfE Plain Language standard 

Posted by: , and , Posted on: - Categories: Accessibility, Content design, Plain Language Standard, technology

In digital, data, and technology in DfE, we’ve published a Plain Language standard.  The Plain Language standard ensures that users can:  The standard incorporates our ways of working and best practise for user-centred design in government. It should not create …