Public sector

We tend to lead the Discovery phase, in which we seek to understand:

• The aims of the organisation – what success looks like, and how progress will be measured.
• The needs of the various actors in the service – those who use it, those who deliver it, and those who manage and/or judge its performance.
• The hard constraints we’re working within – be they policy, technology, or resource-driven

Then, armed with this insight we can:

• Define a new blueprint or vision for a digitally-optimised service
• Articulate a series of solutions that combine to deliver that vision
• Plan how to test these solutions, and the assumptions that underpin them, in Alpha.

We like to work as one team with our clients, getting everyone involved to build empathy and understanding of user needs.

And we work in the open – delivering show and tells, publishing our work for others to learn from.

Our consultants have delivered discovery work for Royal Navy, DoHSC, Cabinet Office, Bristol City Council, Public Health England, Dept of Transport amongst others.

During Alpha we identify the most risky assumptions underpinning our ideas. Will this meet really user needs? Will users choose to use it? Can we deploy this technology? Can we store data securely? How much time will it actually save?

Then we find ways to test them out by:

• prototyping front stage and backstage interactions and processes and testing our prototypes with users
• building technical a proof of concepts to test the end to end system.
• researching and modelling impact on KPIs.

Only when we’re confident our solutions pass the tests do we make the case for investing in Beta.

We’ve delivered Alpha phases for Bath and Northeast Somerset Council, Torfaen Borough Council, Enterprise Europe Network and National Cyber Security Centre amongst others.

See our G-Cloud services listing for Alpha.

During Beta and Live phases we adopt a supporting role, working with technical partners or in-house development teams to continue iterating the service design with regular feedback from users. Our role includes:

• Delivering detailed UX and UI work and service blueprint designs
• Supporting or delivering content design
• Supporting the service owner in managing the development of the technical build, for example in writing acceptance criteria for agile teams.
• Creating and delivering an ongoing programme of usability testing and design iteration
• Consulting on organisational changes, technology choices and wider service decisions.

Our team has delivered Beta phases for Bath and Northeast Somerset Council, Torfaen Borough Council, Enterprise Europe Network and National Cyber Security Centre.