Sprint 40
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 Lordcontact a MP or Lord- understand how a MP or Lord represent citizens
What we’ve done
We have officially begun our ‘Members Activity’ discovery. This has been a couple of months in the making and exciting times. Team has been excellent. Both inquisitive and receptive to all the possibilities available to us. What we achieved in the discovery thus far;
- identified who our users are - thus far we believe this work is most valuable to intermediaries (e.g. a journalist), a voter/public, campaigner/lobbyist, MP/Lord/Staff. We know there are more and open for these to change
- wrote out user journey maps - need to work on these as we learn more
- have continued to add to the list of potential activities that MP/Lords do
- organised speaking to users stated above
- set about secondary desk research as coordinated by the fantastic Marttiina
- compiled existing research
- the brilliant duo of Bryony and Jenna are delving into the data - which is a very complex world
- help from colleague Sian who is hunting down business needs
- spent a lot of time talking to people - including inside Westminster and even in other Parliaments
- worked on ethics to do with showing activities and potentially showing more than we have currently
- 3 of the team went and visited PMQ’s to see MP activities in person
- continue to think broadly about what value is this information to our users.
Wider team work;
- Callum masterfully got his head down and worked on opposition roles (e.g. MP X is Shadow Minister for Y)
- fixing the minor issues identified from our report from the Digital Accessibility Centre - 11/14 fixed thus far from my count
- there was a show and tell - I chatted about our accessibility report findings
- more discussions on measuring success - progress being made
- on the side I’ve been setting up a cross-Parliamentary/assembly/legislature group. Want to set up a nice little community of those working on creating healthier democracies. I see value in us sharing or work/findings/issues and collaborating with one another since our challenges and goals remain principally the same.
Random things I’ve learned or have been reading
- was at measuring UX training which was very nice. A good reminder on stats 101. Thanks Jeanette for getting me on it.
- like the rest of the team, lots of my brain has been dedicated to thinking through big broad questions about activity
- Global Research Network on Parliaments and People holding this event - looks interesting.
- interesting use of non-verbal behaviour/activity being studied. The future holds so many options for how we hold people to account.
- New nonprofit aims to build tools to help newsrooms surface often unheard voices + concerns and tell stories that engage + connect audiences on common ground in the aim to foster healthy debate and a more informed public… sounds right up our street.
- nature is amazing.
- going to be at Silicon Milkroundabout tomorrow - excited about sharing our work with prospective new colleagues!!