User Research

Studio Solo has been involved in a wide range of user research projects for public sector clients including GDS, Dept for Work & Pensions (DWP), and Scottish Government.

Emergency Alerts

Working with GDS and the Cabinet Office, James oversaw the launch of Emergency Alerts in the UK - a new warning system that was trialled nationally in April 2023. Creating solid user-centred foundations in terms of user personas, journey maps and creating prototypes, there was also the important national test phase - which involved an opportunity to collect public feedback, resulting in the biggest survey launch and response rate ever conducted at GDS. This early feedback was invaluable for identifying bugs, user feedback and so much more.

As well as public research, there was extensive internal user research conducted with the various ‘publishers’ of such alerts and helping to identify the best use cases. This involved workshops, conducting interviews and subsequent prototype-based usability testing.

Retirement & Bereavement benefit services

At the Dept for Work & Pensions, James was a user researcher embedded as part of the Digital Transformation of Pension Credit, Winter Fuel Payment and Bereavement Support Payment. Within these projects, James has provided his services across Discovery, Alpha, Private Beta, Public Beta and Live.

Pension Credit has proven to be one of the most complex and challenging projects worked on thus far. The complex policy rules of this means-tested benefit, alongside the elderly and often vulnerable citizens who need this financial support, meant it became very clear right from the beginning that we would encounter many other supporting users that step in to help people apply and maintain this benefit.

We were soon able to quantify who our users were through measurements put in place. Within the helper role - we encountered a mixture of official legal bodies such as Lasting Power of Attorney, Appointee and Welfare Rights Officers.

Since Pension Credit launched as an online channel, this opened up the opportunity to allow informal friends and family to help people submit their claim in a more convenient way.

User Research has played an integral part of this transformation piece - to bring rich insight about the users of the service and their entire user journey - from how they find out about Pension Credit, right through to the decision they receive. All research output was regularly presented back to the team to prioritise and drive continuous service improvements.

Winter Fuel Payment was a similar demographic of users to Pension Credit, but the main difference being it is for all UK citizens over State Pension age, who automatically qualify for this annual heating bill payment.

The challenges therefore mostly took place behind the scenes, but there was still plenty of research undertaken to understand the pain points of the existing ways of working. And even though the payment is automatic to the end user - there was still opportunities to improve communication and enquiry channels.

As part of an agile delivery team, James has helped to pass the Alpha - Private Beta service assessment. A quote from the final report:

“The panel were impressed by the continued standard of user research carried out. This has carried over from previous assessments where this was flagged as a particularly strong point with several user groups being engaged with, using a wide range of methodologies”.

James has also worked on Bereavement Support Payment - a working age benefit for a qualifying UK citizen who was married or in a civil partnership to claim a fixed amount of money - often the payment is used in the immediate aftermath of a partner’s death, and because it is for a working age person, this is often an unexpected death.

The user research involved in this project helped guide it through a successful Private Beta phase - at that point it was a digital service for staff to use when citizens called up.

Bereavement Support Payment has since gone from Discovery, Alpha and public beta as a new online application for bereaved citizens to use - as research evidenced the need for this extra channel, and helped inform its design into a simple, fast and carefully considered end-to-end service.