Zooming out: How understanding context can help GOV.UK better understand its audience
Government services don’t operate in a vacuum. Interacting with government is part of a much larger user story, and at the Greenhouse team, we are looking to understand how we can help GOV.UK better reflect the mental models people have of government.
Over the last year, the Greenhouse team have been trialling a range of methods that are not typical of those used by government researchers. These methods have the potential to deepen our understanding of GOV.UK's current and potential users, and were the starting point for speculative design explorations that reimagine what the GOV.UK of the future could look like.
Chris and Marina will showcase the work of the Greenhouse team, and make a case for why context-driven research and design can help the programme to better understand the needs of user groups that we know are not well served by GOV.UK today, and find opportunities to reach better and support them.
About Chris
Chris is a Lead User Researcher at GDS and is accountable for the GOV.UK Greenhouse Future Thinking and Data Insight teams. He has extensive experience in mixed-method qualitative and quantitative research, managing teams of researchers and promoting data-driven strategy and decision making.
Chris has previously led user research in the GOV.UK Notify team to support the development of the National Emergency Alerts service. He's also held previous roles in market research, social research and customer insight.