The brief
Our work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) requires a highly disciplined working environment.
The DCSF wanted us to investigate how parents research schools, childcare and family information online, in order to improve their offering in the schoolsfinder section of the Directgov website. Much information is publicly available on the site but it not always easily navigable by all users.
It was of key importance to the client that any proposed changes were strongly supported by user feedback.
The approach
Based on our research, we created designs concepts and working prototypes that could be tested in focus groups and user interviews.
Our user testing helped us to understand how users went about finding information on schools so that they could make an informed choice for their child. A number of working prototypes were tested, along with the current live site, to ensure that the proposed development was worthwhile. Detailed feedback was provided to the department with statistics to help support the project internally.
The results
The testing results gave their design team clear guidelines for the development of the website. The client was very pleased with the findings and the subsequent recommended changes to the site. These changes have been implemented fully throughout the website and it is due for launch in June 2010.