Weeknotes, Friday 22 November

It’s been cold and wet, time to get the hot beverages out, the big woolly socks, and design some content I suppose. Here’s what happened this week.

Contact form prototypes

We’ve got some prototypes ready for testing that are for our fostering subsite. This includes a financial calculator, and also a contact form. Our user researcher pointed out that in some previous research, some people felt uncomfortable asking for a ‘call back’ (currently the only option), so I’ve made another version with some contact preference options.

Rethinking adult social care content structure

I’ve been writing a very small bit of content, for a start page that will link to a new form for adult social care referrals. There is a lot of complexity in this space that’s well documented, and even a simple landing page throws up problems. The service want to redirect people elsewhere if their issue is to do with housing or mental health.

A colleague gave me some great feedback and challenged whether links to other sections would actually help the person, or confuse them more with a complex user journey. We think we’ve found a couple of routes to support that make sense to include, but need to validate with the service.

Alongside this I’m looking at the section as a whole and trying to prototype what it might look like, if we were to completely redesign everything. Colleagues have done a lot of research and work in the past in this space, so there’s a lot to go through and draw on, proposals that were never actioned.

Trying not to ‘separate’ people

We had some really useful user research, that was a while ago, that looked at content for what the council calls ‘separated migrant young people’. This naming was used as they thought it was kinder than the ‘undocumented asylum seeking children’. In the research, the word ‘separated’ proved quite problematic and was understood in different ways by the participants. They thought it meant they should be separate from British society.

We’re finally in a position to potentially make some changes to this, so I’ve got some draft ideas to share with the service. I’m trying to focus on actions like ‘Get help with your immigration status’ rather than organising content by audience.

Chats about blogging

A few of us met with some folks from Camden as they’re interested in developing their blog. To be honest, we’re in a slightly stalled place with our own blog for a few reasons, felt a bit funny to be doling out advice on this! Hopefully we can revive our Essex Digital Service blog when things are a bit more stable next year.

Distractions

Listening

The Good Kind by Our Girl (album)

Patterns in Repeat by Laura Marling (album)

Watching

Alma’s Not Normal. Phenomenal show from Sophie Willan that will make you laugh and cry on BBC Iplayer.

The Substance on Mubi. Don’t watch it while you’re eating your dinner!