Week Ten (19th-23rd April): "Add some more jokes"

The first weeknotes in a while, not because I've not been doing anything (far from it!) but more because the last few weeks were all gearing up to yesterday - the final presentations.

We left our prototypes as long as we could (three weeks) before analysing them so that we could use the maximum amount of data.  This all formed part of the final slidedeck along with all of the other things we'd done over the last ten weeks.

Well, actually... not "all".  There has been so much done that fitting it into five to eight minutes was impossible.

Tuesday's session with We Are Open was a chance to put some finishing touches to the presentation before a chance to give it a practice run through with the rest of the cohort.  Before that was the important business of setting the running order through the use of a "wheel of fortune" style name picker.

We were lucky with a good draw of second place, not first up but able to get over with quickly!

While (hopefully) far from disaster, this first run through clocked in at over 10 minutes and produced some good constructive feedback.  "Less text", "more images", and most importantly "add some more jokes", while also lopping about a third off the running time.

No pressure then?

Wednesday was a day for editing.  Taking things out, putting them back in, combining two slides into one and trying to pull it all together.  The running time got a bit shorter and a few things seemed to click into place.

Thursday afternoon and we are joined by a few members of Catalyst for the final session and the presentations.  The introduction by Laura and Doug from We Are Open gave a good overview of the whole ten weeks along with some of the results from our bi-weekly check-ins (confirming once and for all that Back to the Future is the greatest film ever made).

Taking all of the feedback on board form Tuesday, I managed to squeeze everything into nine minutes, not too bad under the circumstances and the whole thing felt better for the changes.  A few nice comments in the chat and direct messages hopefully meant it went down well with everyone else.

As for the jokes?  I'll leave you with this (anonymised) message I got shortly after finishing

Awesome presentation, I seriously almost spit smoothie out of my nose

Mission accomplished.

It was great to then sit back and listen to the rest of the charities give their presentation.  Although there were threads of similarity in them, it was amazing to see how we all sat in the same sessions over ten weeks and yet produced so many different ideas and things to test.  They are all doing great things.

• Beats Bus Records
• Caxton Youth
• Collage Arts
• Action Hampshire
• Kent Coast Volunteering
• Parochial Church Council of the Ecclesiastical Parish of Totnes with Bridgetown
• Pennysmart CIC
• WECIL Ltd
• Worcester Cathedral Education Department

Week Six (22nd-26th March): Making a Splash

All of this week centred around one thing - making a prototype that we can get in front of users to test next week.

So rather than the usual daily breakdown of what happened, it all fits together better just to go through the process.

Step 1: Paper!

Good, old fashioned, paper and a pen.  Following on from last week's decision to focus on a new "splash page" that sits in front of our current home page, I first sketched something out on paper as a rough idea of what I was thinking of.  One main remit of this was to make sure we had a layout for both monitor and mobile displays.

Monitor display at the top, with three different mobile designs underneath,

Step 2: Digital

We then moved onto looking at a few different websites that can be used to design a wireframe.  I settled on Whimsical as it looked easy to use for what I needed and also had some presets for monitor and mobile layouts.

Effectively the same design as above, but now with added legibility!

I used this layout to get my first bit of user feedback from my colleagues who had participated in the consultation a few weeks ago.

Due to the time constraints, rather than call another meeting I set up a shared document and emailed a call to arms. The shared document was a clearer way for collaboration, rather than everyone "replying to all" in an email, which can get out of hand quickly (and we all get too many emails anyway!).  From this I asked for thoughts on the layouts, and also ideas for the wording and imagery we could use.

In a short period of time, I had got the first stage of the prototype in front of a small user group and already had feedback.  I took it on board and moved onto the next stage.

Step 3: Actual

With already having a background in website design (albeit a bit rusty), it was easier for me to go straight into coding at this point.  I put together a splash page based on the designs and feedback that we could get out in front of other users as soon as possible.

The splash page (v1)

I took the wording that had come back from the focus group, and ran it through a readability checker.  With a few tweaks, I was able to get the scores better which hopefully means a page that will be easier for people to read.  This helps us towards one of our main goals in redesigning CABmoney.

Another goal could be met (for this splash page at least) by using Bootstrap to ensure that the layout could be created for both monitor and mobile devices.

I also ran the finished page through the WebAim Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool to make sure that it was fully accessible.

With a finished framework and content now ready to go online, I needed some variations so I could do some A/B testing.  One of the areas for concern on the current CABmoney website is the amount of people signing up for an account that then go no further.  One hypothesis is that because the "sign up" link is quite prominent on every page, users might think that they have to sign up (when in reality, it's only needed to save their progress on a Debt Management Plan).

For A/B testing, I am going to have one version of the splash page with the login/sign up form and one without.  This might show if people are distracted by this, when they could just go into the main sections directly.

At this point in the week, the page still needs a little tidying up, and I may look at a different A/B test on the wording to see if the simpler text makes a difference in how likely the user is to click a particular link.  For now though this project has moved into something much more tangible which we can put up on the website very soon.

Week Five (15th-19th March): "You've Got Red on You"

Tuesday

Another shortened week due to being off work on Monday, attempted to clear the decks of "normal" work in the morning before heading to the afternoon Catalyst session.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

- David Bowie

During that session, our focus (particularly our Minimum Loveable Product (MLP)) changed somewhat from what it was just a week before.  Originally, the thought was to introduce video tutorials for the website, which would show users how to complete certain sections.  After working through our MLPs again today, I "borrowed" an idea from one of the other organisations in our cohort to instead focus on the home page of CABmoney.

Although the video tutorials are something we still want to add at a later date, the new homepage (or after a bit more refining later in the week, a "splash page") would be a more achievable target (ie easier to do!) and would give us instant feedback through Google Analytics.

Through A/B testing, we could create two new splash pages and test which was the most effective live on the actual website.  This data could also be analysed against our current home page (already with years worth of analytics available) to see how a simplified approach would assist users get to the information they need quicker.

Also today, while talking about readability, the Flesch test was mentioned which would also be a good indicator on how effective changing our wording would be.

These two ideas combined would tie in well with some of the highest ranking ideas from our staff consultation, namely:

• Clearer, Simple Menus
• Move the Budget Calculator to Front and Centre
• Easy Read / More Visual Explanations

These were all high scoring ideas that could at least be partially addressed by a splash page before the main current homepage.

This revelation (and major change of focus) led to our Design Constraint to be as follows:

And that was only the first session on Tuesday!

The second session went into Service Blueprints, showing the flow through the service and how things connect.  A bit tricky as some people will use different sections of our website, but the general flow is shown in our blueprint below.

Thursday

Today's session was how to communicate our Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) as a "zine". Having only a red marker pen, which bled through the paper onto my other notes and fingers the end product looked a little gory.  If you want to get in a mess like this yourself, get an old leaky red marker pen and make your own zine.

Here's one I made earlier!

Had this been for the full CABmoney website, we could have filled a full book with problems and solutions, but this seems much more manageable for the next few weeks (which is the point!)

The contents worked through the issues with the current home page that we've identified, and show the solutions that should be achievable for our prototypes.  I cheated a little, by going over two pages for one of the images but with quite a small, focussed MLP there wasn't too much to say without it turning back into a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).

Friday

A bit of a catch up day for Catalyst Project work today.  I had a good catch up with my line manager about the project now it's reached the mid-way point which was very positive.

The last couple of blog posts went up (including this one!) and managed to do a bit more work on some of the other aspects but still a bit of catching up to do on a few others.

Week Four (8th-12th March): Big and Hairy

Slightly shorter weeknotes this week, due to me having a shorter week at work, and also having already gone into some things in more detail earlier in the blog.

Monday

We had our first staff and volunteer consultation today, managing to gather six people with varying degrees of experience with CABmoney but lots of enthusiasm and ideas.  Thanks to everyone involved! Getting insights from the people who actually use CABmoney (either for themselves as an adviser, or assisting clients to sign in and enter their details) is invaluable.

First we went through the personas we already had for our clients, a range of six people who may need CABmoney (whether they knew it or not).  The one type of user persona missing was the "adviser" group.  If only I had a group of advisers at hand to help put some together.

Splitting into two groups, the team were able to define two new personas to cover different types of advisers who would use CABmoney under slightly different circumstances but still fit into our persona spectrums,

As it's quite a large part of these first few weeks, our work on personas and persona spectrums has been posted separately on the blog earlier today.

We then went through what ideas and thoughts people had about CABmoney.  As people were already bringing ideas, I left it a bit more informal which was good as it let people chat about and evolve the ideas more organically.  We still managed to get them all down and scored them for how much impact they would have on users (using a method that "kind of" worked, detailed here) and I'm going to do a more detailed breakdown of the ideas in a future blog post.

All in all, a great session, and thanks again to all who attended - I will no doubt be calling upon you again soon!

Tuesday

The first session was to start looking at a content strategy, with a number of personas to cater for and a lot of content on CABmoney, this will be a task for the zombie garden for now, and will definitely spill out onto a spreadsheet rather than a single slide!

Content by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

The second session focussed on finding our Minimal Lovable Product (MLP) by breaking down our "Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal" (BHAG) into more manageable chunks.  Breaking it down into smaller problems and plotting on a graph was very similar to work done in the discovery phase and I think that's where a few in our cohort (self included) veered more to identifying the solutions than the underlying problems.  It also meant the "big reveal" of showing the different quadrants of prioritisation was less of a revelation than it was intended!

BHAG by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Wednesday

A bit of a catch-up day, with the personas and persona spectrums finalised (and now fully illustrated) along with the user journeys.  Felt better to get a few things ticked off the list and into the final playback slidedeck, but still a lot to do.

Thursday

Last day of the working week (for me), and with full intentions to work more on our Content Strategy, the phone didn't stop ringing (apart from when the email notifications were going off), so for now it stops in the zombie garden until at least next week.

The afternoon session was a recap of the BHAG into MLP exercise to make sure everybody had their problems defined, followed by "fast fives".  Again, this was a repeat of something we did in the discovery phase (only there were eight of them, not five!) and for my MLP (How might we improve the tutorials to make it easier for people to refer to and understand) seemed a little bit too narrow to find five solutions for (in five minutes), so some may have strayed into other aspects of the website.

They also didn't lend themselves very well to illustration outside of boxes and lines!

With a couple of days off to come, I'm just hoping the zombie garden isn't too overgrown when I get back!

Week Three (1st-5th March): Ignore the Jargon

Monday

The start of a new month and the slew of jobs that come with it (usually revolving around monthly reporting) meant Monday was a day for getting on with "the day job" so there was more time clear later in the week for Catalyst work.

Tuesday

Thankfully, the Tuesday WAO session was partially set aside for catching up a little and checking where everyone was at.  We were able to get a better handle on personas and feel a bit more "caught up" now after missing this in our Discovery Phase.

Following that we looked at Systems Ecosystems, using a very busy Miro board with many post-it notes, arrows and cursors flying about from all of the charities in our cohort.  Being able to show what we use and what we use them for highlights a few duplicates we already knew about (due to different pieces of software sometimes being better suited to different tasks or users) but always worth keeping tabs on this sort of thing so as not to reinvent the wheel (or not using three different programs to reinvent it!)

Wednesday

I think our Systems Ecosystem is finished, even if at times it feels a little like this:

But really, it's more like this:

Mapping Out Our System Ecosystem by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Ours is certainly making full use of coloured arrows and post it notes.

On a side note, our trial of Trello has gone down well with our team of Social Media advisers, so we already have one "quick win" from the Catalyst Project that we've been able to put into action within the first three weeks.  This doesn't tie directly into the redevelopment of CABmoney, but just goes to show where the tools and methodologies can be used elsewhere across our organisation.

Thursday

Thursday's tech session was all about Agile Development, a phrase I'd heard bandied around before when Citizens Advice built their latest database system.  I hadn't quite got a handle on it (only a rough idea), but now I have a list of new buzzwords to use the next time I do a standup before breaking an epic into timeboxed sprints.

Then we talked about not alienating people with jargon, so maybe just ignore that last sentence!

Into Office Hours shortly afterwards, to get a bit more confirmation over those troublesome personas.  I think we're nearly there and with a couple more to add next week, they should be ready to share on the blog next week.

Friday

The end of another busy week!  Finalised the slides for our internal consultation on CABmoney (more on that next week) and sorted out a running order for it (hopefully I'm overestimating the time at two hours).  Fingers crossed the tech (including my internet connection) holds up as I've set up a Google Form that links to Google Data Studio to "hopefully" create a live Ideas Prioritisation map.

If it all works, I'll share how I put it together on the blog next week.

If it doesn't, we'll be back to pen and paper!

Week Two (22nd-26th February): Hot Mugs and Zombie Gardens

Monday

Started the week by finalising a date for our internal consultation about the CABmoney website.  We've managed to get together a selection of advisers with a good range of experience using the site and their input will be valuable.  Amazingly, there was a time slot that everybody could make so we're just two weeks away from putting some of the methods learnt in our discovery phase in practice to "rediscover" against our new focus.

Tuesday

Zombie Garden by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Other than sounding like a Netflix TV series that I would definitely binge watch, Zombie Gadens are effectively a way to put ideas to one side until a better time.  Something we'll definitely be utilising!

The rest of Tuesday's session focussed on personas and persona spectrums.  Unfortunately, we didn't cover personas during our Discovery phase, so felt a little left behind.  Fortunately, the team at We Are Open (WAO) covered this by splitting the cohort into two groups to catch us up.  Being honest, it was the first time in the project that it felt like things were slipping as we were at a bit of a disadvantage due to different groups running the Discovery phase differently.  It's certainly salvageable though, with video guides offered by WAO and the open invite to Office Hours most likely being useful to us going forward.

We also started working on our Architecture of Participation, to lay out how people in our organisation can get involved and where they can find information about the project.  With the consultation group already set up, and this blog already available we have a good head start on this and we can continue promoting the work through our internal newsletters and meetings.

The work from Tuesday is all very much a work in progress, with the personas and architecture of participation working documents with a lot of refining to do.  They'll all be up on this blog when we're happier with them, but we are moving forward.  Back at the "office" (virtually) I asked some colleagues to put together some personas for our clients, and we will be looking at covering other user groups soon with people.  Not quite in the Zombie Garden, but at least on the borders!

Thursday

With a bit of a clash of sessions today, WAO swapped around the tech session and the office hours, so a few members of the cohort were able to attend "Designing Human Connection in Digital Services with Deepr".

A number of people didn't get the memo about bringing a hot drink, so didn't get involved with holding onto a hot mug and looking at everyone else in the meeting to create a sense of warmth!

There were a LOT of ideas in this 90 minutes, most of which I need time to digest and look through again.  While I can see the reasons behind a lot of them under the right circumstances, a number of charities were quick to dismiss "showing your room" or "lighting a candle" due to either a risk of confidentiality or burning the house down!

I did pick out a few ideas though that could be applied to the new CABmoney, particularly Lo-fi Hi and Mirroring which I think we can utilise to make a better human connection with people using the site.

That was soon followed by the WAO "Tech Session", much like last week's tech session there were a few things we already knew about as ways to acquire software and new technology but also a few others that sound like being well worth a look through.  

• AlternativeTo
• Open Design Kit
• Open Practice Library

Lots more to go through, so for now, they're in the Zombie Garden (just beside the tomato plants) but definitely useful resources.

Friday

Onto Friday, and it's blog writing (which if you're reading this was a success), another tweak of our personas (now with added wonky drawings) and an outline plan for the staff consultation session which is now just over a week away - how time flies!

Week One (15th-19th February): Definition

A whirlwind week of workshops, meetings, breakout rooms, icebreakers and notes.  Lots and lots of notes.

I was only briefly involved in our Discovery phase but now found myself fully immersed in the Definition phase after a change of tact (see our previous blog posts) and a better focus (hopefully!) on exactly what we were looking to achieve from this project.

Tuesday

The first port of call was a workshop on "Working in the Open" (which sounds like it would be much too cold to do in a frost-tinged February) but covered ways of sharing our work throughout this project.  One form of sharing our workings and process was to post to a blog, so if you're reading this now it's a proven method!

Tuesday afternoon moved to the first session with We Are Open for the Kickoff workshop and a chance to meet the other organisations in our cohort.  More icebreakers and introductions, a short break and then into getting something down on paper (or on screen), Stakeholder Mapping.

Stakeholder Maps by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Plotting various stakeholders along two axes (one for "interested" they are in a project, and one for how "involved" they are) helps show how these various groups should be dealt with through the project's life.

Adding a few extra stakeholders that fit into our project I was able to fairly quickly create a map thanks to the techniques used in the session.  The first bit of "homework" done!

Wednesday

No sessions today, but I realised we needed to think more about our project, especially with us changing focus relatively late on.  Our Discovery phase was still important, but with moving away from looking at video advice and onto redeveloping our CABmoney website, I felt we needed to re-Discover.

Fortunately, we had a staff meeting planned for the afternoon, so I was able to secure a spot to talk to people about the project.  Still formulating what it is we need, I explained why we were doing this and that I'd like to get a group together to do a consultation on what people want CABmoney to actually be.  One positive response from a colleague before the end of the day, made it seem all worthwhile!

Thursday

The afternoon session covered "Audience Analysis".  Well presented, but having worked with our websites for some years I was already familiar with Google Analytics and I just discovered Google Data Studio a month ago.  We don't have a "Data Model" though... hmm, one more for the list!

Session over and if nothing else, I learnt how difficult it is to come up with a three word "how are you feeling" at short notice!

I spent the remainder of the afternoon starting this blog and going back through our client consultation data now that we had a few extra month's worth to pore over.  A few extra thoughts on how and where we can gather data for CABmoney, but that can wait until Friday.

Friday

Using our Google Analytics stats plus information from the CABmoney database, I was able to put together some more data and post up in the blog about what CABmoney is, and the first steps into looking at what we need to do with it.

To get further data, I added a Google Form survey to CABmoney and posted about it on our social media channels. Hopefully, we get enough engagement to discover some more about user experience with the website that will help us get a clearer course of action.

Week one is over, and in some ways it feels like starting over from scratch but at least we have a plan!