Kate Tarling - How to Re-Shape Projects (without antagonising people) - #NUX7 - @kateldn

right next up Kate darling Kate holds a lot of respect from pretty much everybody that I know and work with and her work of ranking is held in such a high regard and as a person who also works in government that's myself by the way and I'm overjoyed that kate is with us on that journey okay we'll be talking about working constructively as part of a team to not just reshape projects for success but also how to evaluate them please settle in because here is Kate [Applause] [Music] thank you for that introduction I'm Kate darling and I'd like to talk about the things that we work on and how sometimes we work on really great things things that feel powerful and goods that we feel really excited about and then other times we're asked to work on things that perhaps we have a bit of a bad feeling about or at least initially it doesn't sound like a kind of thing that would be particularly useful in the world and yet there we are as part of a team working on something and it's really about those situations I want to talk about and focus on in this talk and and it's an example of what I mean by that it's things like this so a system integrated some end-to-end digital service something about a front-end website and some kind of back-end system by the way could it be compliant with GDS and it's things like this I like the way the women's sort of laughing a bit about this and but these are the kind of things that sometimes we are asked to work on and you can kind of get the gist of what is meant by this kind of unpicking it and it might be that it's a really great project like the chance to think end-to-end looking at kind of things front stage and backstage but that's not apparent for me it's kind of been reduced to a fairly technological component driven description or another one a digital experience platform to replace an unstable content management system in parenthesis that places users at the heart and I don't know about you but I'm not fully convinced this will place users at the hearts I think it's more likely that some people in an organization are having problems with publishing content that they want to publish and they'd like a fix for that I said that I haven't made up these project names they're live opportunity is actually being advertised in the digital marketplace and available for any of us that would want to work on them but it's into these environments that we then add really great you know digital capability and user Center design so we have developers and research and designers and all of us and we come in thinking about our users and performance and what's important but we're then coming into teams who are like right so we're building a CRM systems we just need to get on and do it and I think the thing is as we talk about kind of where people best fit on teams and our ways of working and how best to do work we sometimes forget that in the largest organizations we're coming into this environment this is the sort of pre-existing context of hundreds of different units departments functions that already exist that we're now kind of adding a whole new swathe of people onto and most large organizations don't tend to take the time to kind of think or how do we need all of this can we clear bits out so we kind of add and add to what's already there the decades of bureaucracy and process we built up that we then add to and it's sort of no wonder why organizations sometimes feel a little bit unfocused and what tends to happen in the absence of any overarching structure or meaning is each of those units and if we profession including design kind of has and brings their own values and worldviews and by that I mean kind of what's important so for some people delivering a project on time and to budget is probably a fundamental part of that profession or perhaps for us it's making things that work in the real world for the people that need them so everybody has their slightly different focus about what's important and that plays into how we think about things like performance and how we think good work is done and then who are allies are and then how defensively feel so when we think about work and how its described with it's kind of a product of this underlying kind of not often talked about messy structure of organizations and I think it can kind of be summed up by to what extent are the organization's we work for really focused on themselves so as an organization we I do all this stuff what bits of it do I want to buy or build or outsource because that will be easier I don't want to be responsible for this bit someone else can do it better so let's outsource that bit and it's quite in Wiggly focused and there's a profound difference between that and being more outwardly focused and by that I mean being really clear about what that organization is trying to achieve in the real world and to what extent is it doing that well or not and therefore what does what it needs to do build or buy relate to that and coming at it from that way around so the core questions that I have in my mind almost every day is how do we know if a project is going to be good or bad or I work with lots of large organizations so helping those organizations to figure out when should they start work and of what kind and when should they continue funding work so should something continue as it is should it be changed or should it absolutely be stopped it's a waste of money and then how can teams describe the work that they do in a way that works for everybody and by that I mean it's not just what we do for users that then doesn't make sense for somebody working deep behind the scenes and operations but neither is it reduced to a fairly reductive just what technology components do we want to build and I have eight points or eight thoughts around how we can do that better collectively the first one is untangling the kind of the purpose and the context of the work so this is on the assumption that an organization has given you something to work on a brief a project you've come into a team that's already shaped and it's already starting to work and here's an example so we need a portal I'm sorry for those of you in the world and the audience who are allergic to that word but we bear with me we need a portal for applicants to submit their bank statements electronically so this is a thing for many organizations it probably sounds quite reasonable and what we want to do is unpick what's actually going on here so to start with when we say applicants what our users actually trying to do because even believe people don't want to spend their time applying for a thing they want to do the thing that they want to do and there's something else in between there whether it's getting a mortgage or insuring your house or getting a visa or a driving license so coming back to what's fundamentally are people actually trying to do and then the we though an organization is large so who is the we of which we speak is this about a particular team that's currently processing things in a different way is it about the people who care about the problem space what is it and then why this why now and if we didn't do this what else would happen and there we're trying to get to what are the implications of this what other ways in which we might think about whether it's good or not and why this portal usually when people say the reporter they mean a thing that gather some stuff together or that does something rather than it being a gateway to another dimension but why why this and not a portal how else might we might be do it and then why do users need to do this and what does that data tell us which I'll get bank statements its financial something what are we doing and what does that allow us to do when we say electronically and getting to that like are we talking about the fact that there are reams of paper being passed around and it's slow and it takes time and it's unclear and how is is it about an efficiency gain then and so we kind of gradually unpick what's really going on so we can come up with a set of plain English statements about the change we're trying to make happen and essentially for with the team we're trying to what trying to figure out what would make the thing we're trying to do good as opposed to just a portal existing in the world so the second point established the level at which the work is happening and by that I mean we kind of have so many levels that we work at so in some cases we're talking about a really enormous end to end service or another thing might be you know very granular detailed about some change we're making to how data is derived or worked on and when projects become unclear is usually because we've lost the relationship between these things or they're so abstract no one can figure out what the relationship is or if there is one in the first place and so as an example we might be particularly in kind of large consultancy land we might have opportunities to think about designing from scratch a big end-to-end service so that that's the kind of work that happens at that level or to pick another one we might be improving or changing just a task so an activity so that could be in the case before actually it's about how people proves that they meet some criteria or not so that's not really a service in its own right it's just a part of how something works or we could be working on making an API available so there we're working kind of firmly at that kind of data level and it's usually got a much kind of bigger context and that way we can break away from it just being what the data is made available so our job is done - well what data and how and is it really available and to whom and when and the bigger questions around it and so to take that portal example I think probably what we're talking about is a change to some tasks so about checking eligibility and then probably some kind of technology change and then some data change and that feels like it's a more helpful way to think about it and relate it to something bigger that's going on for a user and related to that I guess we're talking about placing the work in context of either a broader service if the thing you're working on is a service or if it's something else placing in the context of humans approach things and to give an example of that let's say this is an abstracted version of a service if you work on a product that really isn't part of a service you might think about this as a sometimes called customer lifecycle so how does somebody even find out about the thing how do they go about getting to it using it and then making sure it's the right thing and something we've done we found really helpful is identifying what desired outcomes are for each of these stages so by that I mean if this part of it worked really well what things would we see happen and so in this case it's be kind of the very early bit so if someone's got to figure out that they're meant to be doing something all that your product is even available to them so if that works well then users should know about the thing and be able to find the right thing for them and understand what to do next or count themselves out so if I'm never going to be eligible for your mortgage like it's best if you don't waste my time and the organization doesn't waste their time to or to pick another example from the organization's perspective and let's assume there's some kind of decision-making process going on so they presumably want to make a fair fast and evidence-based decision and one that the user actually understands and in time for when a user actually needs it and so those are kind of things that if this is working well this is what should happen this would be the end result and so then positioning whatever project or thing you're working on again some of these stages becomes an interesting comparison for how you might evaluate it or think about whether it's good or not so in islambol here we've got a random project happening and we want to make it about reducing confusion helping people choose between product options really sensibly there was a government example introducing a step by step guide so it's clear what our user was actually meant to do as they're approaching a fairly complicated service or equally there might be in a kind of fairly internally focused project and hopefully that it's around increasing the likelihood of applications being ultimately approve because that's probably the most efficient way so thinking about design and thinking about what users are actually doing what is it that we can build or make that actually makes that outcome more likely I think at this point it's fair to say that some people don't like you doing this for a number of reasons this expression on this guy's face feels really familiar and there are a few reasons why this can come about and some of them are really valid and you need to really listen to them something I like to do is anticipate what an intelligent person would say if they fundamentally disagreed with everything that I've just gone through and to write those down ahead of time and then work with a small set of people to come up with what we think are best answer or a best response to this is is it a fair challenge probably almost challengers are usually fair it doesn't mean right so how would we answer that are we so sure of our own approaches and to give you a sense of things that I've definitely come across one is like we just don't have time for you to unravel this we've got two months to deliver a complicated thing it's already impossible it's taken us months to get to this point don't you dare come in this room and start meddling with what we were already set and feeling reassured about doing or another challenges yeah sounds great we're already doing everything you say everything is fine and either you need to go in previous knots or stop meddling and that's a bit of a deflection tactic but then you have to go off and do all of the hard work because you strongly suspects that the thing that's being worked on practice isn't doing what it could be or good enough is okay we don't need the gold standard as if the idea of being clear about your work and how you might evaluate it is the gold standard and I think this next one is really common what that that's great you know ideally yes really understand where you're coming from would love to but if we don't ship a portal by Maeda for first we'll lose credibility with the business and that takes precedence over everything else or the users perspective isn't relevant to this don't worry about it that's fine and these are really valid challenges and again if in the break or on Twitter or anything if anybody faces challenges like these I would love to talk more about them having faced them many times and I think at the end of it it's kind of fear and it comes back to there's different world views about what's important so fear that we'll be wasting time and not actually doing productive work by sort of standing around chatting about stuff as opposed to just the value of taking 30 minutes out of time and making sure that everybody's really clear about what good looks like so it's fair to say we can often but not always reshape existing work and I think the trick is to realize when have you got the fighting chance and when is it more annoying at this point and you just have to let something go the slightly more productive way around is being involved at the start of when this work is being shaped and formed in the first place and that's what the rest of these points are about and so for one thing if you are able to do it being able to clearly identify what the organization does from an externalized perspective puts you in a really good position to then be able to frame the work that it does the home office of all places came up with a list of services that it offers the home office is part of the UK government that deals with passports immigration like fairly serious things like that it came up with a list of services not as it thinks about them internally but how an end user would come to think of it so visit the UK work in the UK transit through the UK and it did this not it's not how it thinks about things internally but it understands that it's important to think about actual behavior of users because that has a real impact on the bottom line how much these services cost to run all people doing the right thing are people complying with the rules and every one of them is underpinned by really strong policy intent and goal but it gives it a kind of externalized way to think about performance and from that it allows space for really good user centered design and someone like the Home Office can do this I would bet most large organizations would be able to and the next step is to establish shared goals that make sense for everybody and a caveat here because I don't mean high-level Willy hypocritical mission statements that don't relate to anyone's actual job I'm talking about the things that actually relate to products and services the organization's making so taking the UK passport office as an example you could say what it exists to do is provide a secure way for citizens here to be identified when they're traveling between countries so it's essentially a travel document as opposed to an identification mechanism and all of that kind of boils down to a big service which is getting citizens secured passports that work where and when needed in time for when they need them so that's kind of like the description of the service and I've just called out involved the ways in which you can see if that service is working really well it's good the kind of ways in which it should fulfill its job therefore so it's not just about can users use the service it's got a huge job in thinking about the outcomes for all of the interested parties around here so if one is obviously users like it has people need to travel they need to travel quickly they need to be able to get passports but you know passport fraud is a huge thing around the world so that service has to think about working working well for security and risk experts and their advice and the various border controls in every country it's amazing watching people handle so many different kinds of passports Airlines to in certain conditions have to check your passport I've seen people hold a passport off and they're like you saying kingdom of Lesotho is this valid if this ballot in front of the person from the kingdom of let's offer it like yes my country is valid so the design of the passport itself has an impact so you know like for those of you that have UK passports when you're trying to quickly flick through and find that kind of bit with your boater one and it's not at the front or the back it's somewhere in the middle and it's really complex so that kind of takes time when you're kind of busy queueing and then all the suppliers and partners so those involved in the photo taking process those involved in the kind of careering of secured documents so for this service to be good there's a lot of moving parts to think about so when we think about outcomes thinking about what works for all of these people and all under the line of having a kind of shared goal and once you have this list of services nothing was more stark I was looking at the list of services and I just turned around to the people in the room and said how much help how much are these services costing to run how many people are using them are they good or are they bad do they work do they not work and none of us could answer the question and it's funny because before we had that list we were aware of all the different projects and whether we thought they were good or not and so on and so forth but then having ever in this list you suddenly realized how little you know about the actual performance of a service and that was as a service designer and I suddenly realize how kind of reprehensible that was so finding out how the things that you're ostensibly working on are performing especially if you're making improvements this slide is really hectic there's a link at the bottom so if you want to actually read detail behind these prompts and there's a way to do that it's essentially over years of working with teams what are some of the core questions that you can ask yourselves and each other about how the thing you're working on performance and it kind of follows an end-to-end from how somebody might come to know about your thing to whether they can use it well or not whether it's useful to them what happens and so things like you know how many people should or could be using this thing so either that's your kind of potential audience your potential customer base or in the case of public sector you might need people to be using this thing so you've got a kind of okay of all these people how are we going to get them to know about this and all those people how many are aware that they can or should be doing something in the first place so have you got kind of an awareness problem to deal with and of those how many are actually doing something so have you got a kind of activation problem people are not doing anything they kind of know about it but they're not that bothered or don't think it really matters that much that's a whole other collection of issues to work through and for those are aware how many then find their way to the service and in something the size of government that's a real big problem and for any large organization it's got lots of variations of a product or a service and of those that start how many bother to make it through all your various stages so if you've got an application process and then a take document somewhere else process and something else so presumably there's going to be some drop-off as people just cannot to do it and time and effort measures both for the user as well as the provider so there's kind of an internal efficiency mechanism there and its performance lower for any individual group these are hidden things so if we've designed it and we haven't really thought about access needs we may or we may not notice that great groups of people are having particular problems so that's a kind of special category to look for and then where else do we see general confusion failure people not feeling confident because that equates to increase support costs and other parts that an organization simply acknowledges are bad you know those things where so oh yeah we know that's really terrible it's just an awful part of the service actually doing anything about it though and that's different because they're quite things like that are quite hard to quantify any impact and they just about work so nobody bother doing anything and then more radically if we were going to start from scratch or who are going to make fundamental improvements what would be the very best way to get to that overall service outcome we're aiming for so last few points to think about the one is around using those desired outcomes as the basis for radically redesigning products and services and there are kind of two ways of coming at this I have an example from mr. workshop running with senior leadership and many other people around the organization like series of workshops trying to get to if this service works really well forget how it's done or how but what kind of things would we see happening that potentially we could measure or evaluate and you can't measure a value at everything but that's very different to not being able to measure evaluate anything so we came up with a series of prompts and they sound kind of like basic common sense things so in this case you know the application process because there is one captures sufficiently accurate information that such that the organization can process it there and then without having to kind of go back and say what was this you missed this that was bit with inaccurate so that's just one point along this big service and so either you can use assess of outcomes like that to then think okay what would be the really best way that we use technology or we do something really different with the people that we have working on it to get to make that real to make that happen and work on getting to their overtime or if you're in the kind of organization that likes to think up ideas like how might we use artificial intelligence how might we use automatic robotic processing how might we best use machine learning so kind of starting from a here's a solution where should we deploy it it's the kind of nice sort of bumper against that thing we like yeah we could is that the best way of getting to these outcomes and you can do it whether the service exists or not and so that's something to think about and it's a kind of promise like a protector against kind of people imagining all kinds of technological solutions or innovation for something that really doesn't relate to what people are actually needing okay so to summarize there's quite a lot of points we've just run through as a kind of step process that I sometimes think about when I'm thinking about reframing work the first is really untangling the purpose and the context and that's usually because you're taking something a work piece of work or project or a brief that already exists or has already been set and kind of picking it apart and the second bit is around establishing the level that it works at so is it big is it like little how does it relate to something that actually makes sense for somebody in the outside world because therein lies the route to thinking about good performance measures and then placing it in the context of a service or if you don't particularly work on a service something that makes sense to the way humans approach considering whether they want to have you or use your product and to anticipate challenges up front and again let's anyone who wants to talk about them let's discuss them in the break and then reaching far further out - can we move more into a place where we are conceiving of work and helping that process in the first place identifying what the organization does from an external outward facing perspective it doesn't make sense to people who work really internally and have done for years at first until you start showing people how the work that they do relates to that external perspective and once you've got that relationship it tends to sit from that you can then establish shared goals and outcomes which then help all of those different parts of the organization start seeing a way in which they might work together a bit more cohesively and then finding out performance of the things that we work on and then sharing that making it really visible something we did was together pretty basic case team our prototypes of what would it look like if we had a really empowered service owner and who was in charge of how good or bad this service was what kind of things would we want them to be looking at so it was an approach type about what might work best for them it was a we've got an opinion about what's going to work best and we're going to build it and see what happens so is a prototype for a kind of provocation and we put it in the hands of people and it was really fascinating the kind of discussions that came out everything from it's too hard for us to get these numbers because no organization currently thinks of measurement that way so therefore it's quite hard to and actually get the numbers but when you do it suddenly started taking off and some of their kind of the most senior people in that organization got really excited about it and then commissioned work for us to actually make this real for several of the core services and then finally using outcomes as the basis of redesign and it doesn't matter if the service doesn't exist yet you can kind of have a go at thinking what does good look like once you know a little bit about the context and then kind of keep iterating and changing it from there okay so if any of these points have made sense or feel like they're relevant to the work you do there's a link there to a bit more detail and more examples about this but thank you very much for listening [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: northernux

Views: 390

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: usability, user experience, ux, nux, conference, design, nux7

Id: LO1MUSwYXQc

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 09 2019