#code4ca

This was our first week onsite with our government partners, so we spent much of the week settling in. A few highlights:

Tuesday:

We’re official! We took a trip across the river to Gatineau (Mike’s first time in Quebec) to get our ID badges. 

Week 21 | Monday November 11 – Friday November 15

After a solid couple of weeks of Design Sprinting, CanUX and FWD50 this week is to regroup and a chance to get some heads down time.

This is a short week as we took Monday off to observe Remembrance Day.

We had the opportunity to visit the Associate Deputy Minister Michael Vandergrift to talk about the future of GC Travel and show him some of our experiments.  He also broke in his new @DMA_PSPC twitter account by tweeting about the meeting.

I was heads down coding the Travel Estimator, a prototype idea we've had kicking around for a while now.  The estimator helps you plan your budget by pre-populating meals and per-diems, city rate limits and other accommodation allowances.  Developing this prototype actually meant updating an API experiment we’d created as well.

Next week, we’re testing with users! 

Week 22 | Monday November 18 – Friday November 22

It’s pretty surreal to think that we’re rounding out week 22 of 40 embedded with our partners. That’s 55%, whew!

We made serious headway this week:

Talked with 6 travellers and travel arrangers. Mostly focused in the NCR, but some in other provinces as well.

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Made significant headway on organizing an upcoming pilot with a small test group, where we will be prototyping tools to test whether we can improve their travel experience if they had flexibility in where they booked their travel.

Opened the conversation with our comms team about how we can share our prototypes more widely.

Wrapped up the first version of a fully interactive, functional prototype that helps you put together a travel estimate.

Started getting feedback on the prototype to learn whether it satisfies user needs. (Does it help reduce the time to build an estimate? Does it reduce errors in the estimate?)

Got a local Postgres database set up to consolidate some large Excel files, and allow me to run SQL queries (my data bread and butter) on the historic travel data we have.

Developed a first draft of a current-state service blueprint.

Caption: Mike and Andrea discussing the travel estimate prototype.

Alternative caption: A woman with blonde hair and blue jacket stands holding coffee beside man with red jacket sitting in a chair. They are looking at a laptop computer hooked up to a monitor. They are in an office cubicle.

This week was heavily focused on the building and testing portions of our newly minted team slogan:

Learn & Build & Test & Repeat.

As a product manager, I’m stoked that we’re prototyping, seeking data to define success/failure of the prototypes, and getting feedback from real end users which is leading to… what is shaping up as a product backlog!

Another big turning point this week was changing our working style slightly. We’re shifting back to sprints -- but one week sprints! This will allow us to have really short, tight feedback loops from prototyping to getting feedback on it, and shifting direction based on the feedback very quickly before we invest any more time in a bad idea.

Week 10 | August 26–30, 2019 | Team: Maddy (Product Manager / fellow), Andrea (UX Designer / fellow), Mike (Software Developer / fellow), Robyn (Sr. Product Manager / NextGen Travel), Daniela (UX Researcher / NextGen Travel)

Big themes this week were connecting with others outside of our core team through office hours and bringing our wider team into our process; and optimizing our research process by doubling down on research ops and preparing for our next round of research.

Sprint 3 | August 6 – 16

At the end of each sprint, our core team conducts a sprint retrospective where we reflect on the sprint and ask ourselves:

What went well? What didn’t go so well? What can we improve?

1. This sprint, we felt really good about doing things

Mike blogged, Maddy planned office hours, we actually put ideas to "paper", we made things, we prototyped and conducted user research

Action Items:

Continue to identify blogging opportunities as we work

Continue discipline-specific focus

2. We have some improvements to make in research ops + user testing

There was no movement on UXR onboarding form

The lines between the research team and the research we're doing are fuzzy

Planning and scheduling was last minute and rushed, need better screening and recruiting for interviews

Synthesis was a lot of transcribing, note-taking was a lot of work

We lost context with hand-written notes, and should try and find a way to get everyone listening to research

Action Items:

Mike is exploring audio recording

Andrea ran a research retro which helped identify some concrete things we can improve, and had a follow-up meeting with our research team about research ops and is suggesting tactical process improvements here

Mike committed to push UXR onboarding mechanism forward for Sprint 4

3. We encountered external blockers

Outside our core team; lots of folks are on vacation

Daniela was sick for a week

4. We had a good balance of ownership, collaboration, and time – and want to continue striking this balance

Mike had time to explore Rules as Code, Daniela felt ownership over her project’s direction, Andrea felt like we worked "together" during user interviews, Maddy had more focus time and felt more clarity over our direction

But we should take a step back and do more generative research (not only prototype evaluation)

Action Items:

To continue finding this balance, continue setting clear ownership over tasks by breaking tasks down into bite-size pieces

Meetings for decisions and sharing -- not doing work

5. We had more flexibility in where we worked!

Working from home day + GC coworking

Action Items:

Let's try "no meeting Wednesdays" or "work from home Wednesdays" by default, and if things come up we'll be flexible and accommodate meetings, etc.

6. We had some good and some bad in how we worked

The good -- less doubting ourselves mid-sprint, good daily collaboration sessions for Maddy/Daniela, sprint planning got more specific

The bad -- we didn't really use the Trello board, still feel like we're not communicating at the beginning with our partners/stakeholders, and lots of meetings still, Maddy felt less visibility into activities of the wider team

Action Items:

Try incorporating Trello in standup to give your daily report

Let's do a Monday team-wide weekly standup (1 min/team update)

Give updates to external stakeholders regularly

For meetings -- continue to ask ourselves if we have a role in meetings, and if it's not clear, ask the meeting organizer what they expect of you (DARCI)

Anything here resonate with you? Any suggestions for how we can improve? Drop us a comment below, or connect on Twitter!

Happy Friday!

We hosted our first office hours!

We had three goals:

To show some of our recent work [designing a prototype + testing the prototype], and get feedback.

To meet public servants championing similar innovation projects, and to spark conversations across teams and departments.

To share our experience with user research, and learn from the experience of others (something we’re deep in the weeds with right now).

(above) Office hours attendees discussing user research methods. At the downtown Ottawa GC coworking space.

Andrea facilitated a session to debunk some of the misconceptions about user research terminology. Sometimes, we throw around “user research” and “user testing” – but do those umbrella terms mean the same to each of us? How do our experiences using different methods differ?

We broke out into pairs or trios, and picked 2–3 different user research/testing methods to discuss; our experience with them, and if we didn’t have personal experience, what questions we had about them. Then, we came together as a group to share back.

(above) Andrea, UX Design Fellow, facilitating an activity about user research methods.

(above) Myself and Ali, #NextGenTravel team member and #GCAgent, discussing user research and testing methods we’ve had experience with in the past: eye tracking, diary studies, and usability testing.

(above) Notes from our activity.

As a group, we had experience with, or questions about, the following (from more generative to more evaluative methods):

Diary studies – useful to observe change over time

Workshops – used when you have no idea or hypotheses, what do you focus on?

Behavioural studies

Focus interviews

Hypothesis testing via different methods

Card sorting – helpful to map a process

Participatory design – involve users throughout the process

Co-design – focus on bringing users into the process instead of bringing the product to them

Usability testing – can users accomplish the task you want them to, where do they struggle?

Eye-tracking – useful to inform design decisions about where to order content, language, information hierarchy

Clickstream analysis – used to observe online interactions

This list isn’t near exhaustive, but was a great start to spark conversation – diary studies for drug testing, behavioural studies to test tobacco packaging, using co-design to bring users into the process and build a better, stronger product or service, etc.

Thanks to everyone that attended! We look forward to hosting a second office hours soon, sharing more work, and engaging in more discussions. Stay tuned on our blog for more until then.

– Maddy, Product Manager Fellow

Luke Simcoe on storytelling, Communications Lead for Code For Canada

We will be working with Transport Canada to conduct user research with drone pilots, and prototype digital tools to help them fly safely and in accordance with new regulations.

Fatima Sarah Khalid — Developer

Fatima is a software engineer and civic hacker with experience working inside and outside of government. Her adventures in civic tech have taken her from the U.S. to Canada, and she’s worked for clients like Microsoft, the City of Boston and Digital Echidna.

She’s deeply committed to making technology spaces more inclusive, and passionate about building open source tools that reflects the needs and desires of the people who use them. For Fatima, the Code for Canada fellowship is an opportunity to build technology that makes a meaningful impact in people’s lives.

Andee Pittman — UX Designer

Andee is an experienced UX designer and consultant from British Columbia with a focus on social innovation and participatory design. She blends her design practice with a strong social conscience and has worked on challenges ranging from blockchain applications, to housing and reconciliation.

She is excited to explore how participatory design can be used to deliver digital products in government, and is committed to bringing values of reconciliation, diversity and accessibility to her work with Transport Canada.

Jennifer Payne — Product Manager

Jennifer is a committed design researcher with an MSc in human-computer interaction. She has run user research studies for clients ranging from American Express to the United Nations, where she worked on a tool to help UN analysts query social media data. She strives to promote curiosity, empathy, inclusion and collaboration in her design and product practice. As a Code for Canada fellow, she’s excited to work with her team and government partners on a project that will make a positive impact on the lives of Canadians.