Over the past few weeks, the content designers on the Service Design team have been rewriting parts of the Essex County Council websites. It’s about trying to understand what people are looking for, and working out how best to communicate that, in the most economical way possible.
In early March we started the process of reviewing and testing the content of a chunk of the information advice and guidance on the Essex.gov.uk and Living Well websites. Last week we published the first batch of pages that went through that process.
At this week’s show and tell we heard about 2 pieces of work that showcased the ‘test, learn and improve’ approach that we try to take to all of our work.
It feels like an exciting time in the service design team. We’re coming to the end of our first significant piece of work. We’ve had time - and produced sufficient work - to meaningfully reflect on what we’ve learnt so far, and these observations are feeding into our preparation for the next phase of work.
We know that not everyone can get to our Wednesday morning sessions, so we’re posting a quick summary here. It’s still much better to be there in person if you can, as the conversation and connection around the presentations is where the magic happens!
Over the last few months we’ve been working to understand the current state of essex.gov.uk and plan how we might get to a better future for our web presence. We’ve gathered insights from available data and call centre staff and tested how easy it is for users to find things on the site.