User research guide

There were so many questions about user research

When I first joined the Ontario Public Service (OPS), I was asked some challenging questions from OPS employees. Here are some highlights:

Identifying research objectives

When is the best time to do user research?
How long will it take to do user research?
How do I identify target user groups when we are meant to design for everyone?
When do you know that you have done enough user research?

Getting stakeholder buy-in

How do you get approvals to do user research?
How do I communicate the value of user research to my superiors?
How can I get my superiors more involved when they are so busy?

Conducting user research

How do you conduct interviews online?
What is the protocol for recording participants?
Do you have existing research plans we can use for reference?

Streamlining research operations

How much are we supposed to pay participants?
How do you recruit participants in my ministry?
Do you have an existing template to get consent from participants?

What employees wanted

Standardized user research guidelines.
Answers quickly, ideally before going through approvals.
Feedback on their projects from our user research team.
A space to do user research with their participants.

Lucia speaking in front of a large crowd in a meeting room

User research open house in Toronto 2018

Group of 12 people sitting on office chairs taking notes

View of overflow room

Group of people staring at a screen taking notes

Audience taking notes

Photos by Jen Lee from Ontario Digital Service

Through collaboration and research, I gathered together best practices for:

how to get buy-in from stakeholders
recruitment strategies
consent and compensation guidelines
privacy considerations

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Additional user research support

Lab spaces for conducting user research

The lab team offered space and equipment for any OPS member to conduct user research when needed.

User research drop-ins

Any OPS member could drop-in at the lab and get expert user research and design advice from a team of experience designers. The 2 hour drop-in sessions took place every 2 weeks.

I attended the user research drop-in hours last week to seek advice on research methodologies that can be used to gain intelligence on why Ontarians are calling ServiceOntario call centres. This research will help guide our approach to reducing the number of informational calls ServiceOntario receives.
_{— Anonymous}

In-house user research projects

The lab team took on high priority user research projects from ministry partners when we had capacity. They could also find qualified service designer and user researches from a vendor list.

Photos from Ontario Digital Service

How the user research lab has made an impact

In the span of over a year from August 2018 to September 2019, the user research lab has connected with ministry partners to collectively share and implement best user research practices.

User research guide

2,621

Unique page views for Ontario’s User Research Guide with no marketing spend.

3 min 38 sec

Average time spent on the page. This is one minute higher compared to other pages on ontario.ca.

33%

Scroll to the bottom of the page.

User research drop-ins

27

Drop-in sessions were hosted to answer any questions or share expertise about user research and design.

133+

OPS employees and contractors have shown up in the drop-ins to talk about challenges and needs.

28+

Ministry departments connected at user research drop-in.

The user research lab continues to provide and improve user research services for OPS employees.

Takeaways

Although there are not many unique visitors to the user research guide, data suggests that people are engaged with the content once they land on the page.
Keeping the drop-in sessions informal created an open, non-judgemental and inclusive environment to hear shared experiences.

Thanks for inspiring me about user research and connecting the dots for me on how Lean and service design can connect through users and user research. Let’s continue the conversation to learn more about this.
_{— Hedia Balkhi}

By connecting many ministry partners together, we were able to identify duplicate initiatives for the same problem. This enabled teams to connect with each other, diversify their approach and create more meaningful services.
In ministry departments that have only one analyst working on multiple products, it created a space to learn and bounce ideas off each other.

Acknowledgements

Champions of excellent service standards.

Katherine Benjamin

Katherine started and managed user research labs in Kitchener and Toronto until 2018. The labs implemented user-centred service design practices across OPS.

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Shannah Segal

Shannah is our head of experience design chapter and has led the Service Design vendor of record for teams across the OPS to consult with service design experts.

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Xiaopu Fung

Xiaopu led the Kitchener lab since 2018 and led many weekly design sprints, which incorporates user research and prototyping to validate concepts quickly.

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Nadine Adelaar

Nadine and I worked together to start the user research drop-ins, which became a tradition and has served many members of the OPS with their user research inquiries and projects ever since.

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Honey Dacanay

Honey led the Ontario Digital Service Standard and Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act. Her work has been crucial to raise the standards for high quality digital government services.

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Dana Patton

Dana is the primary author of the Service Design Playbook. Dana is the founder of Service Design Guild, where you can connect with the community and attend many workshops and events.

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Sameer Vasta

Sameer introduced 8 principles for digital leadership with the focus on people and what it means to be a public service leader in the internet era.

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Hillary Hartley

Hillary is our shit umbrella, our leader for all things digital in government, and has been a long time champion for user-centred government services.

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