Week 26 - Thinking housing repairs 🏚️
I’m about to start my first Discovery/Alpha for Made Tech, with Camden Council.
I’m about to start my first Discovery/Alpha for Made Tech, with Camden Council.
Camden wants to improve its housing repairs service, to enable more residents to report repairs online, and to design a better user experience for those who do so.
I’ve been thinking about how to start this project well….
Building blocks 🧩
Some very smart people have thought about this problem already…. hoorah! (For example, recent work from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government).
While we’ll focus on Camden (every council is unique), we can learn from insights gathered elsewhere. Things like:
Are there common processes for reporting housing repair across geographies?
How do residents feel about housing repair services?
What components of repairs might work as a digital service?
We intend to use what we already ‘know’, and build on it. That way, we’ll learn new things quicker, and contribute to the growing pool of insights in this area.
A blended discovery/ alpha 👩🏼🎨
“A blended discovery/ alpha is a sign of a high-functioning design team.” (Paraphrasing Harry Trimble, 2021)
I’ve been reflecting on that statement.
For this work, we aim to blend elements of discovery (learning about the needs of users) and alpha (testing concepts/ prototypes/ ideas) into each sprint. We can do this because we already have insights to work from (from Camden, ourselves and others). Combining discovery and alpha will help us deliver at pace; but it will require good planning, strong teamwork and agile working.
Risky assumptions 🧗🏿♂️
In government, we work on complex problems. We could explore these for years and still not understand their intricacies.
With limited time and resources we need to be strategic, and learn (and fail) fast.
For housing repairs, I’ve been thinking about the ‘riskiest assumptions’ that underlie what we plan to do. I’ve been contemplating two in particular:
That most residents will want to report a repair online.
That online reporting will provide sufficient information to triage and respond to repairs well.
If these assumptions are wrong, the service will not be successful and/or not provide sufficient benefit. By testing these assumptions, we’ll have a good idea of whether the idea is worth exploring before we invest too deeply.
Prepare, prepare, prepare! 👩🏽🏫
As an 8 week project, we’ll need to work fast.
We’ve started to think about:
Data Camden might have that would be useful in our first weeks
How to plan user research recruitment, so that we can access users when we need them
How to work with the Camden team, so that we capitalize on their expertise and experience.
Happy weekend
That’s all for now. I’ll update you once we get to work, so watch this space.
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Narelle is a User Researcher at Made Tech, based out of our London office. She is on secondment from Essex County Council.
Designed and Made is a newsletter about user-centred design at Made Tech; a company building services to create outcomes in the public sector.