Blog post: Working in the open to showcase our projects

Working in the digital team can sometimes feel like working in the shadows. We find that lots of our colleagues don’t really know what we do or how we work. It’s a challenge so many of us face in NRW - we’re a really big organisation and we are all busy with our own priorities.

We got our heads together as a team to think about how we can showcase our work in different ways. One idea was to invite colleagues to work with us or shadow us. Think of it like a digital site visit if you will. 

We kicked things off by inviting Sarah Jennings, Executive Director of Communications, Customer and Commercial, to one of our permissions project sessions. 

Sarah joined us via Teams on a cold Monday in January to watch a user research interview and note take with us. 

We don’t always have the opportunity to carry out user interviews but James Lewis (our User Researcher) had managed to squeeze in some time over Christmas with people who have applied for permission to film on our land. 

Watching these interviews are so useful but they can feel uncomfortable sometimes too. They are so important to help us make sure we make the website better for our users.

After listening to the interview we discussed the main themes that came out of it:

• timescales are unrealistic 
• processes are inconsistent
• we are seen as inflexible
• application forms ask unnecessary or confusing questions
• web content is complicated
• good relationships with local contacts 

 

Making the website better for the people who use it

Sarah found the interview eye opening - it’s good to hear this stuff first hand. It was also a great opportunity for us to show that we have access to really valuable research that can help improve the website, and the services we provide as a whole.

While discussing the themes, Sarah was interested to know about the challenges we face when sharing our findings and working with teams to make changes. It’s true that this can be a challenge for lots of different reasons:

• outside of digital, not everyone feels empowered to be able to make the changes that are needed
• often there isn’t just one person who can make the decision to do things differently
• change can take a really really long time

We have found that with the permissions project there is a real appetite for change. The team wants to make things better for the user and more efficient internally. Their openness and willingness to try and do things differently allowed us to design and deliver the ‘check if you can use our land’ service.

This is the first ‘check’ service in NRW and something we think could work well for lots of other areas of the organisation.

 

Can you have too much research?

Sarah asked if we ever felt that we had to gather more research to help encourage change internally.

It was an interesting question, but the answer is no.

The reality is that we don’t always have access to user research. We’re a small team and we work hard to make the best of the tools that we have. Most of the time we rely on desk research which includes:

• Google analytics (what pages people are looking at)
• Hotjar (what users are doing on the page)
• customer hub enquiries
• website feedback
• insights from the team

Working on the permissions project over the last year we’ve used all of these tools (and more) to find what the problems are for users using the permissions service. The user research that we now have access to has validated and strengthened what we have learnt.

We are in the final stages of developing ‘‘one way in’ for our permissions service - turning six different application forms into one. We are also developing further recommendations based on our research.

 

Find out more about our work

Take a look at our content and publishing manual to find out more about our work.