Find an energy certificate - passing a GDS Alpha assessment

Where: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) - now known as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Length: 8 weeks

Key contributions: inclusive user research, accessibility, service design, successful GDS assessment

Overview

The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) service allows homeowners and tenants to check the energy rating for a property and find assessors. In order to sell or rent a property you must have an up to date EPC making it integral to the housing market. In 2019 MHCLG launched a project to transform the legacy service and bring it ‘in house’ in order to modernise the service, better meet user and policy needs and save money. When the service went to the Government Digital Service (GDS) Alpha assessment, however, it failed on multiple grounds including: a lack of user research and testing with users with accessibility requirements; not enough testing of different design ideas. I was asked to join the team to run a secondary eight week Alpha, focussing on developing alternative service design ideas, and recruiting and testing prototypes with users with accessibility requirements. This secondary Alpha then culminated in another GDS assessment.

Objectives

• To pass the Government Digital Service (GDS) Alpha re-assessment

• To  understand sub user groups and their needs - particularly those with accessibility or assisted digital requirements

• To better understand user’s motivations for using the service 

• Build a service that encourages users to improve energy efficiency of their properties 

• Test the end to end service

The team and my role

The team consisted of a user researcher (me), UX contractor (part time), interaction designer, content designer, developer and product manager.

As the user researcher on the project my responsibilities included designing, recruiting for and implementing multiple rounds of user research. This included both generative methods to understand user’s motives, energy habits and needs, as well as evaluative methods to understand the usability and feasibility of multiple designs via prototype usability testing.

I used my research insights to generate actionable recommendations for both the content and interaction designers, working closely with them to iterate the prototypes and inform service design decisions.

Challenges

• Short deadline of 2 months to complete the work before GDS reassessment

• Accessible and assisted digital users can be hard to recruit for research

• Discovery user researcher no longer on product team

• Limited access to original Alpha user researcher 

• Service owner reluctant to engage in the transformation project

Approach

Research review

I began by reviewing the existing research to date across Discovery and the original Alpha to better understand: 

• known user groups, needs and journeys

• prototype design and testing to date

• hypotheses and assumptions

• research questions 

• any gaps in the research to date

• unsuccessful assessment report findings and recommendations

This was a quick, effective way of getting up to speed with the project and helped me develop an understanding of what, strategically, needed to be done to ensure a successful second assessment.

Planning and recruitment

I prioritised the Citizen user group for the secondary Alpha research as they are the primary service users and the user group that accessibility legislation applies to in relation to government services. Using the previous research I segmented this user group based on known and assumed characteristics into:

• tenants - private/social

• homeowners - buyers/sellers/ non-movers

• landlords - private

This ensured that the new research would help us better understand the varying needs within the Citizen user group and helped inform my research screeners and recruitment avenues to get as representative a sample of users to test with as possible. I also developed personas to help the team empathise with users and build up buy in for the research.

I recruited 17 participants (including 8 with access and 5 with assisted digital requirements) directly and via a specialist recruitment partner to secure participants with accessibility requirements. I then designed discussion guides for two rounds of moderated usability testing as well as guerilla or “pop up” research at a local library to test different design ideas.

Research and analysis

I moderated two rounds of research, each including: 

• qualitative interview questions: to understand the user’s motivations and behaviours when using the EPC service and around energy efficiency

• AB testing: different designs to understand which ones helped users succeed first time and which reduced pain points

• evaluative usability testing: to test the end-to-end service and draw out unique challenges and needs for accessibility and assisted digital users.

I then conducted analysis following each round of research where I:

• led thematic analysis of the qualitative interviews

• used the insights to build artefacts and make design recommendations

• led qualitative data analysis of the usability sessions 

• prioritised insights and design recommendations to help with design iterations

During this time I encouraged the service owner and their team, who had traditionally been contract managers with the external supplier, to attend research activities and learn more about human centred design. By getting them to observe research sessions I was able to gain their trust in the methods I was using and to get them to more fully buy into the teams’ research and design approach.

Design and development

Following insights from round one I worked with the content designer to develop prototype #2 where we: 

• iterated the content, aligning it with the GDS style guide to make it simpler

• made call to actions clearer

I also worked alongside the UI and content designers to develop a new certificate design which: 

• used similar design pattern to credit score to test if it was easier to interpret 

• included primary cost-efficiency guidance and secondary energy-efficiency ‘nudges’

Testing across prototypes #1 and #2 showed that a middle ground was needed in the user journey. Too many steps and potential journeys, as shown for prototype #1, was confusing for the user. Too few steps, however, as shown for prototype #2 also led to confusion as users weren’t sure what was happening or required from them. 

Outcomes

I attended the secondary GDS assessment with the team and presented the user research work. We successfully passed the secondary assessment and, following my additional user research work, the assessment panel was impressed that: 

• I could talk confidently about user’s needs and motivations, and considered the service based on the clear but diverse needs of different kinds of users of the service 

• I introduced moderated testing in my research, spoke to and tested with users that fell into the assisted digital spectrum and also users who use assistive tools to go online 

• the team confidently spoke about how most of the design changes have been made as a result of user research feedback  

• the team had started iterating regularly based on user research

• the team had an approach to include users with access needs in the regular research cycles, and carry out research with low digitally skilled users

Next steps

Once the Alpha reassessment had been successfully delivered, I worked closely with the product manager to leave the incoming team with a high level research plan for Beta including potential research methods, objectives and design ideas to move forward with.