Keeping content consistent across large programmes of work | Jon Gough

Project info

Role: Service designer
Company: Capgemini
Client: Public sector
Duration: March 2021 - January 2022
Status: Launched 🚀 and ongoing

Overview

A bit different from other projects where I was able to directly engage with the user as part of a delivery team this role involved me sitting as a senior service designer across a number of delivery teams that has their own interaction and content designers and user researchers.

Working with them as well as a large range business stakeholders this project was more about stakeholder management and the ability to derive a way forward when different groups disagreed more than the design and research work itself, that was handled by the individual teams.

The problem

Although all working within the same government department and on the same program of work there were a large number of inconsistencies across the language and content used within the services.

For an idea of scale the teams are as follows (generically named)

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Each of these teams had their own delivery team, stakeholder, SMEs etc, all delivery to different timelines and had their own policies they had to adhere to. Alongside that there is wider context of support teams, guidance and online web presence to consider. All of which has inconsistencies when it came to how things were explained or terms used.

This needed addressing and it was my job, alongside numerous other end-to-end projects to get everyone on the same page.

Opportunities

Opportunity 1

Create a consistency of language and terminology across services to create a clearer user experience

Opportunity 2

Link teams together to harbour collaboration within an end-to-end journey

Opportunity 3

Create a repository that is a living document that will be reviewed and last over time for the services to use

Challenges

Challenge 1

Large company/departments can be notoriously siloed

Challenge 2

Time - getting everyone together to discuss and putting plans in place

Challenge 3

Keeping it up to date

Challenge 4

Getting stakeholders from every area on board

Challenge 5

The way the services work is not to pull content from a central repository, each team has their own content designers, they need somewhere central they can use to get the information they need

Users

The two main groups that will use the end 'product' are as follows.

User group

Content designers - In their day to day work on the service

User group

Guidance writers - When writing the guidance and GOV.UK pages relevant to the service

These were disected into further groups by the individual teams but for the sake of the case stuff we stuck with the two key groups.

Actions

After the initial meetings and workshops with the teams involved in the programme we put together a working group with a content representative from each area to start to tackle the issue

We did a content review of each of the areas to identify the inconsistencies across the services, from there we then needed to decide what the actually language and terms needed to be.

We consolidated research from all of the teams, thats over 25 rounds of use ability testing across the services with 4/5 participants for each giving us a great understanding of what works and what doesn't.

What next?

After discussions and the decision on time/not over complicating the solution, we created a shared confluence space that could be accessed by all that was the ‘style guide’ for the programme of work, it including language on how to address certain things but also how to refer to other, how to stylise some of the works or acronyms.

Each of the services were then to update their relevant areas to match the style guide.

Conclusions

Seeing this as a working practise was satisfying after months/years of inconsistency's the programme were finally consistent across their messaging to users.

Reflecting on the opportunities I can conclude the following:

Opportunity 1

Create a consistency of language and terminology across services to create a clearer user experience

Reflection

Through the collaboration from the teams we were able to achieve this even if it took longer than expected

Opportunity 2

Link teams together to harbour collaboration within an end-to-end journey

Reflection

This piece of work sits within a larger one to keep collaboration across teams in the larger end-to-end, this work has helped build the bonds between teams that weren't their before

Opportunity 3

Create a repository that is a living document that will be reviewed and last over time for the services to use

Reflection

The end result was the shared 'living' document on the confluence space for all to help maintain and contribute too

As well as the opportunities its work reflecting on the challenges:

Challenge 1

Large company/departments can be notoriously siloed

Reflection

The linked between teams were formed, but it was a slow process, hopefully they will continue to build as the programme moves forward

Challenge 2

Time - getting everyone together to discuss and putting plans in place

Reflection

As expected the process wasn't a fast one, trying to get times for all of the members of the working group together wasn't easy and was sometimes weeks between sessions

Challenge 3

Keeping it up to date

Reflection

The working group still meet and are responsible for the up-keep of the style guide

Challenge 4

Getting stakeholders from every area on board

Reflection

This was tricky but over time and with the support of the teams themselves we were able to speak to who we needed to get the language that worked best for the users for the most part, a few policy rules stopping some of the changes but overall successful

Challenge 5

The way the services work is not to pull content from a central repository, each team has their own content designers, they need somewhere central they can use to get the information they need

Reflection

After the final content audit being everything inline they are all up to date and are designed to the same style guide now