We sometimes have to do this over support tickets as part of the go-live
process; now we’re directing people to add a sender (as part of the task
list) we can explain what it is in context.
Since GDPR came into effect it’s less clear about whether we can
contact teams for user research purposes.
If we make people opt-in (or not) we know we’re safe to contact them (or
not).
Since we mostly care about how services are using Notify for real (ie
live services) or services that are considering adopting it (ie those
who have contacted us with a question) it feels like the go-live process
is the most appropriate place to collect this consent.
Now that we’re a more mature platform we don’t care so much about the
load that one service might put on our platform.
We do care about intended volumes for two reasons:
- modelling the benefits that services get from using Notify
- managing stocks of envelopes (while our letter volumes are small
enough that they could be skewed by one new service)
Changing to the ‘how many per year’ question also has the benefit of
mapping directly to the data we store in the ‘beta partners’
spreadsheet.
We often check that a service has an appropriate text message sender as
a condition of them going live. We don’t mention this anywhere.
The services for whom GOVUK is definitely not an appropriate sender are
those in local government. As we have more of these teams starting to
use Notify, we should streamline the process by making this check
automated.
This commit adds that check, for teams who:
- have text message templates
- have self-declared as NHS or local government
We’ve found a significant property of users (about 25%) who request to
go live aren’t completing all the items on the checklist.
In 1 of 6 (17%) of the usability testing sessions we did on this process
we saw someone skip straight past the checklist page because of big
green button syndrome. While 1 in 6 people would normally be a small
number[1] in the context of a usability testing session, it’s enough to
cause a big workload for our team (assuming it is the sole cause of
people not completing the items on the checklist).
The initial reason for using the tick cross pattern for the checklist
was:
- it was coherent with the rest of Notify
- the task list pattern didn’t have a way of showing that something
still needed doing – it put more visual emphasis on the things
the user had already done
There’s been some interesting discussion on the GOV.UK Design System
backlog about users failing to complete items in the task list. A few
people have tried different patterns for communicating that items in the
task list still need ‘completing’.
So this commit:
- adds a task list pattern
- uses the task list pattern for the request to go live checklist
The task list is adapted from the one in the design system in that:
- the ‘completed’ label has a black, not blue background (because Notify
often uses blocks of blue to indicate something that’s clickable)
- it adds an explicit ‘not complete’ label which is visually not
filled in (sort of how ticked/unticket radio buttons work)
1. With the caveat that looking only at task completion, or quantifying
qualitative not good practices and the intention here is to show that
the numbers are close enough to say that they could be symptomatic of
the same problem. Leisa Reichelt’s Mind the Product talk is good on
this https://vimeo.com/284015765
At the moment there’s nothing in Notify that says the logo on letter
templates can be changed from ‘HM Government’. While some people guess
that it’s possible, or are motivated enough to enquire, others might be
assuming that the branding can’t be changed (and thus deciding Notify
letters aren’t for them).
In the future we should make this process slicker (eg with a file
upload) but the easiest, quickest improvement to make for now is:
- let people know that the branding can be changed
- direct them to support if they do want to change it
Service contact details are needed if the upload document permission is
enabled - this used to be a link but services can now choose to use a
link, email address or phone number. The form to add or change service
contact details now gives these options and validates the data according
to the type of contact details provided.
When validating phone numbers we can't use the existing validation
because we want to allow landlines too, so there is a basic check that
the phone number is the right length and doesn't include certain
characters.
The page where you switch on the feature
---
This content aims to describe:
- the benefit of basic view – ‘make Notify quicker and simpler’
- who it benefits – ‘team members who only need to send messages’
- how it does it – ‘by hiding…’
- what it prevents users from being able to do or see – ‘everything
except…’
- what it allows users to do – ‘send messages’, [see] ‘templates, a list
of sent messages’
I’m still keen to mention sent messages here, as it feels weird not to
mention it at all when it’s 1 of only 2 options in Basic view. I don’t
think it’s as important to mention it on the Edit team member screen.
I’ve specifically used ‘a list of sent messages’ rather than just ‘sent
messages’, to make it seem less like a noun (new feature).
The page where you choose whether someone has basic view
---
Switches the focus from what you can see to what you can’t.
Aims to be consistent with both:
- the description of permissions in admin view
- the language used to describe basic view in settings
One of the big things we found in user research was that people were
uncertain what the effect of giving someone basic view was.
So in the spirit of ‘show don’t tell’, this commit adds a way for users
to preview basic view. They can go into the preview and click around as
much as they like, just as if they really had the basic view assigned to
them.
Once they have seen enough they can return to the settings page where
they can decide whether or not to switch basic view on for real.
This commit adds radio buttons to the ‘basic view’ page. This will let
users choose whether basic view is on or off for their service.
As before, this page will only be linked to if a service already has
basic view, so this commit does not launch the new feature.
This commit adds:
- a row to the settings page…
- …which links to a page explaining what basic view is
The new row (and link) will only appear for services who already have
the feature switched on. This is because we are not launching the
feature yet, so it shouldn’t be available to just anyone.
When a platform admin user clicks on the button to add the
'upload_document' permission to a service, they should be taken to the
page to add a contact_link if the service does not already have one.
Added a page which lets users with the 'manage_service' permission change the
contact link for their service. There are no links to this page yet
since only services using document download will need to set a contact
link.
At the moment branding is an undocumented feature. We get a bunch of
support tickets from teams asking its possible.
This commit:
- lets people know it’s possible, and what the options are
- is the first step towards making this process as self-service as
possible
In some cases we will be able to infer a user’s organisation from there
email address, and Google image search their logo. So the experience for
them is that they press a button and government just sorts it out for
you (also known as "the dream").
In other cases we will have to get back to people asking for a copy of
their logo, or to find out about their service, but this is what we have
to do at the moment anyway.
