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User-centred design

Podcast: the first in our 'Think digital, act human' series

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Emma Stace - chief digital and technology officer - gives her personal view on mental health during covid, and the conversations she's had about race in the past year. She also explains what service ownership and user-centred deign lab are and how these ways of working make such a difference.

Doing user research for service line mapping, at speed

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Service design, user research, User-centred design
Postits on a whiteboard

In our second post on service line mapping in the further education sector, Magda Bober explains the user research approach - local, immersive, and in 2 contrasting geographic locations. She also talks about how the findings are shaping policy.

Emma Stace - looking back over 3 years

Graphic of a white number three in a square pink box

From 4 people in a basement to 120 across 3 sites, DfE Digital has grown to respond to its users' needs for excellent, user-centred services. Here, chief digital officer Emma Stace reflects on how far we've come, what's been difficult and how we're shaping up for the future. 

How our Manchester team made a difference in 2019

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Careers, culture, National retraining scheme, Service design, User-centred design
A photo of a big metal bee structure in our Manchester office.

Our Manchester office is becoming a really important centre of expertise in digital delivery and transformation. Jack Collier explains how what he and his team do in the North West, and with teams across the country, is a crucial part of our aspiration to provide a world class education for every child.

Growing our service owner community

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Careers, culture, Service design, User-centred design
Service owners from DfE working in breakout sessions

Service owners play an integral role here in DfE where we focus on making things better for our users. Strengthening our community of service owners is important to us. Here we explain why that is, what the service owner role itself entails and the benefits and challenges service owners face.

We've updated The Delivery Book - a book to help teams deliver

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Agile, Service design, User-centred design
Paper copy of The Delivery Book

After we published our bog post on The Delivery Book in February, we said we'd update it based on your feedback and to share the latest version. Here it is. It provides you with the tools to take an idea and develop it into a policy or service designed around the needs of the people who'll use it.

Testing 'Apply' - the new application service for aspiring teachers

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Service design, User-centred design
Teacher sat amongst classroom of (Key Stage 3 or 4 it's not determined) pupils all looking towards the front of the room. Everyone is looking very engaged and happy.

To get more great teachers into the profession DfE is building a new service for aspiring teachers to apply for teacher training. The new version is now in prototype and the team have started taking candidates through the updated service. Sarah Fisher talks here about the team's work so far.