Child Benefit
I led the discovery phase of the Child benefit service. Discovery is the early stage, when a team finds out what users need. To do this, we visited users at home. We found that this is a very complex time in people’s lives. They often take on several things at once, such as home improvements. Filling in a single form to get money for the rest of a child’s life is easy, but it often gets left and put lower down the list. This is how we identified what users needed. I carried out much of this research. I also mentored a junior User Researcher. I helped them build their skills in journey mapping, usability testing and stakeholder management.
A screenshot of the proposed Child Benefit start page.
Service mapping
Using our research, I made an as-is service map. This is a picture of how the service works today. It helped stakeholders understand the service and see where users get frustrated. It also helped change their priorities, as described at the end of this story. We used the map in co-design workshops with subject matter experts (people who know the service well) and stakeholders. With the map in front of them, we worked out solutions to their users’ needs. We then ranked the solutions by value to users, value to the business, and how complex they were.
The service map we used to show users' frustration.
Prototyping
The ranking guided what we built. I worked with a Content Designer and a Developer to sketch and prototype the journey. A prototype is an early model that people can try out. We relied heavily on existing components from the Design System. Because of this, we built a prototype in under a week.
What changed
The discovery showed that the change users needed was bigger than the scope we had. To make big improvements for users, we would need a bigger team. So we stopped design work that would not make much difference. The team focused instead on building an API that the Child Benefit office could use.