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Sprint 37

10 Apr 2017

Reading time ~2 minutes

Sprint 37

Hi, I’m Colin a product manager working on beta.parliament.uk. Each sprint I’m going to keep a running update of the work we’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way.

The team’s current focus remains on helping users to:
  • find a MP or Lord
  • contact a MP or Lord
  • understand how a MP or Lord represents them.
What we’ve done
  • Added a members position in a Government department. (understand how a MP or Lord represents them)
  • Finished off work on members membership to a committee (understand how a MP or Lord represents them)
  • Finished off work on writing up the findings from a recent usability session (related to find a MP or Lord)
  • Had a brilliant session ran by our designer Victor about how to tackle the usability issues we discovered
  • Had a great session discussing future work and possibilities in regards to written questions (understand how a MP or Lord represents them)
  • Fixed a number of bugs - lots to do with our ‘all’ button on our list pages, one that amended our content on “immigation” and “bullet visas”.
  • Worked on a more prominent status banner (with a neat little icon)
  • Worked on our cookie pages
  • More discussions around best ways to add content to our pages
  • Discussions and background work to help add social media links and links to a members personal website on our beta pages (contact work)
  • More research on bettering our contact journey (contact work)
  • More research on what users need from voting records type info (understand how a MP or Lord represents them)
Random things I’ve learned
  • Surgeries are a relatively recent occurrence. I had romantic views that MPs had been regularly going back to their constituencies for hundreds of years. In fact I was told surgeries are quite recent phenomena, only really got going from the 60’s onwards.
  • Stuff on Written Questions that constrains what we might deliver in the first iteration.
  • Information about Financial Interests systems and reporting.
  • Also been thinking on the need for cross-Parliamentary network. Even started a blog post.
  • Nice chat in the Lords about AI
  • Good chats about democracy in the digital age with colleagues
  • Bits and bobs in colleagues weeknotes.

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