Connecting public-sector leaders

In times of COVID-19!

Introduction

At the end of 2019 I joined a fully-remote agency working for the UK government. I joined in the Beta phase of the project and a couple of months later the pandemic hit.

Our client was a public organism to support cross-sector collaboration within the senior leaders of public services.

Main tasks

• Interface and interaction design: I worked in Figma to produce all the mockups, so content people, developers and researchers could easily collaborate.
• Content design: I helped the content team develop a content style guide so they would achieve consistency throughout their products.
• Supporting the research team: I helped our User Researcher taking notes during her interviews and tagging the transcriptions.
• Speculative design: I supported the team run a workshop to help the client define the trajectory and the future of their project.
• Accessibility: I helped analyse the results of an accessibility audit, and make the changes to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Biggest challenges

Public website & event

One side of this project was to design a website to inform leaders of what this new body could do for them. Through the website they could also sign up to attend in-person events, find information, or request an invite to the private platform we were also designing.

The first live version of the site, responsive and on display for guerrilla testing at a conference.

Private platform

The first thing I had to design when I joined was the filter and search interfaces to navigate the directory that the client had put together with the details of all public sector senior leaders.

Of course, security and privacy were key in this platform, as lots of sensitive information were being handled. Also, they needed to be compliant with the highest accessibility standards that the UK government requires.

The Connect Directory was a private platform for senior leaders to find contact details and connect with each other.

Another challenge was to design a frictionless but secure way to log in, which we solved by sending magic links via email.

Speculative prototypes

After the workshop on speculative design, I created some prototypes to show the client what the organisation could do in the future if they made a good use of the data we were gathering.

The possibilities to connect leaders were exciting and promising.

Useful guides

Another output from this project that I really like are the guides that I put together to help civil servants working in this project understand the needs and limitations of our users: the senior leaders of the country.

I created a couple of decks to summarise the behaviours of leaders and the relevance of accessibility so the client could get some guidance on how to design their software, printed materials and events after we left the project.

Help understanding personas on the left, and example of the accessibility deck on the right.

COVID-19 response

Of course, during the pandemic our team did whatever possible to support the government, so this meant that we witnessed a lot of uncertainty and pivoting during this project.

The main consequence of this was the low morale on a team of people who also weren’t used to work remotely. As a fully-remote agency, we had the essentials already covered, so we supported the team as much as we could, giving them tips on healthy home-working practices, and being extra flexible with the constant change of plans we all were experiencing.

What I learned from this project

• Having a content designer in the team makes the difference.
• Accessibility is important, but it’s also super interesting!
• Pivoting can drive you crazy, you must do like ballerinas do, and fix your gaze on one spot, being that spot that mental health comes first.