Llibertat

We are Llibertat. We help organisations communicate. Communication is about listening before you speak. We help you listen through data capture and analysis. So you can speak in a way your audience will hear and understand. You need to know what your people need before you can meet that need. That includes the audience that haven't found you yet. It also includes your internal audience ... When your teams have the tools and processes they need to communicate better... Productivity improves. Quality goes up. Team morale increases. Staff retention improves. Mistakes happen less. Unnecessary waste disappears. Momentum builds. We use content strategy, service design and content design to improve the way you communicate. Your thoughts?

Every day, an estimated 250 new digital health apps add to the thousands designed to help people monitor, manage, and prevent health problems. But how is digital health generally helping to create joined up services and user journeys? For example, how can nurses, specialists, caregivers and patients use digital health to communicate clearly with each other and get the best healthcare outcomes? Digital health generally means using digital technology to help population health and health services and systems. This includes: * making it easier to do high-quality health care * widening access to appropriate healthcare * improving efficiency in how healthcare works day to day You might have wearable technology such as a Fitbit to monitor your heart rate or activity, use a virtual platform to book a GP appointment, or use an app to manage a chronic condition. More than 1.3 billion users worldwide (https://lnkd.in/eAYRAxFP) make use of digital health tools, around four times as many in 2024 as in 2017. A similar expansion of digital transformation in healthcare, in the UK, for example, has seen phrases such as digital front door, integrated care systems, and digital primary care become huge parts of a digital transformation projects. There are problems. For example, patient feedback can still be seen as purely anecdotal evidence. However, as one example of innovation in creating joined up, user-centred journeys, the Universal Care Plan (UCP) for London (https://lnkd.in/e69J4NQr) is about to significantly level up in what it provides. What started in 2021 as a way to help people create urgent and end-of-life care plans will now be a personalised care and support plan for people with many different health needs, including long-term care. In nursing, developing care plans have traditionally been the way everyone involved understands what's needed to get the best healthcare outcomes. Crucially, at the centre of any UCP, which can be accessed through the NHS app, will be what the patient says - their own needs and desires. These include: * needs about communication, including how the patient communicates and how people can help them communicate * likes, dislikes, goals and concerns * medical devices and support needs The potential of the UCP to help join up ways of communicating should map to the goals of NHS personalised care and support planning (https://lnkd.in/ekYXY-s4), where patients should be valued as 'active participants'. But what innovations are you seeing, or want to see in digital healthcare journeys? And should we be adding terms being used in digital health and public sector services such as digital front door to our A to Z of User Experience Design? https://lnkd.in/eZD66uFz

When we talk about accessibility in content design and UX generally, we know it's not as simple as, for example, making colour contrast work. But how much can consciously using our emotions and applying ethics help to reduce risks of inaccessibility when we're actually developing digital services? A lot of accessibility is built in to content design. Even more so, embedding accessibility thinking and patterns across the lifecycle of building and managing user experiences is key. What this looks like in reality generally is starting by discovering not only the who, what and why of the users and their tasks, but doing the really hard work to understand people's mental models, differing perspectives and the complexities of people's context - physical, mental and emotional. Prototyping solutions and testing with users benefits hugely from qualitative user research. User research brings substantive depth to understanding how people think and feel about their experiences, and how that might be challenging. This holistic-aimed view of the whole person also benefits from the questions that, for example, we'd expect anyone in user-centred design to ask, as a human designing for humans, such as 'What happens if someone using this product needs to do this task on a mobile while being stressed and caring for someone?'. Ivan Sipilov's account of designing to help non-native job seekers (and anyone with difficulties in using language), and why the team started to focus on revealing the job seekers' personalities, provides an excellent example of designing for humans and harnessing the power of emotion and ethics. Sipilov's story of a digital onboarding platform for finding nannies in Canada surfaces through the design challenges we'd expect, but also brings in how conscious compassion aided in design. Fairness and kindness suddenly became crucial in understanding that, as Sipilov reveals, 'using text bios was unfair toward the non-native speakers'. The innovation of adding the option to create an audio fairytale opened up multiple opportunities to provide a more rounded sense of the job-seeker, and further innovations such as specific use of AI and dictation. As Sipilov says: 'just because we can’t achieve perfect empathy doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Design is about getting as close as we can, listening, observing, and adapting based on what we learn.' Get the full story of Sipilov's lightbulb moment about empathy in design: https://lnkd.in/eWaupV2P Find out more about starting with accessibility: https://lnkd.in/eE6Y-tvQ #uxdesign #userexperience #uxui #designthinking #contentmanagement #digitalservices #accessibility #designforhumans #empathyindesign #digitalskills #digitalplatform

Making digital content work for your organisation or business shouldn't feel like chaos. You shouldn't have to react to every request or event as though it was a crisis. And yet, it still so often is. Content strategy and content design (as well as other UX design disciplines) take the stress out of managing websites, apps and other digital products by identifying what's needed. But what gets across the benefits of using user experience design so you can make a difference, whether to how content is created or what's created? Use a mini-discovery. A good discovery phase in agile is about understanding the problems that need to be solved - the who, what and why of what's going on. A mini-discovery learns about people and their needs, internally and externally, through one or more workshops with key stakeholders, users, or just relevant people who have skills, experience and thoughts. Mini-discovery sessions produce actionable results by digging into problems in a structured way, surfacing real issues - including opinions or facts people may not know or want to acknowledge. The results ground what's possible in the idea that people need to trust people to make change happen. Show not tell in one or more mini-discovery workshops can demonstrate how understanding the problem from the users' perspective leads to evidence-informed decisions. However, mini-discoveries also show how user experience design is all about people. Humans are at the heart of UX work because the goal is creating usable, emotionally useful user experiences that work for humans. Find out more about making content transformation work by putting people first in Padma Gillen's three-part blogpost series: https://lnkd.in/eVdjQzcn #uxui #uxdesign #userexperience #userneeds #contentdesign #contentstrategy #servicedesign #digitalskills #digitalproducts #contentmanagement #websitedesign

How much information do you need to make evidence-based decisions about what people need online? Depending on your situation, using that old classic GOV.UK phrase, you might need different amounts and kinds of information. However, you won't get anywhere, for example, useful content audit results, without asking questions. Asking questions stops you getting overwhelmed by all the website, app or digital service stuff by giving you boundaries so you understand: * why you might need to gather information - the goal or outcome * how much information you need - what's essential to take the next step * what kind of information is most useful - is analytics and Hotjar enough or do you need user testing and indepth user research interviews? * how to cross-refer information to make a decision, including whether you need to do anything now, or at all You can easily gather, for example, every bit of content from every nook and cranny of a website, or dive down every last rabbit-hole of confusing deadend user journeys. It's really, really tempting, particularly on big content audits. But you can always start by looking at what people look at, engage with and act on, and what people don't, and go from there. Use questions upfront before you start any improvement or change work, whether an audit or a Discovery. That way, you'll focus your time and effort so you can: * cut a path through the mountain * pull out the big themes and patterns * analyse confidently, understanding that the process of discovering what people need and meeting needs happens best in bite-sized steps * produce recommendations that are genuinely actionable and 'impactful' Find out more about tackling big problems, like digital transformation, in a human-centred way in Padma Gillen's acclaimed book Lead with Content, which you can download for free: https://lnkd.in/e3H9_i7J #uxdesign #uxui #contentmanagement #contentstrategy #contentaudit #contentdesign #userexperience #userneeds

Is the mobile language learning platform Duolingo worth the user experience design hype? Or are the many, many UX articles about Duolingo (like this one) swayed by a fairytale? What if it’s both, and that’s okay because Duolingo understands how to meet user needs? Duolingo’s origin story does sound like a fairytale, but it's true. A Carnegie Mellon University professor called Luis Von Ahn saw people in his native Guatemala struggling with the cost of learning English. Duolingo was designed to transform lives through free education. Since Duolingo launched in private beta 13 years ago in November 2011, it’s: * developed into the world’s most downloaded language-learning app (https://lnkd.in/eT_c5WfP) * now teaches nearly 40 different languages * developed so most users pay nothing to learn, with around 8% of paid subscribers fuelling 80% of Duolingo’s revenue (https://lnkd.in/ehAa-WAw) * become tipped for even bigger success in 2025, in part due to using AI to create personalised learning experiences (https://lnkd.in/edspH9xj) You should watch the funny and insightful Ted talk by Von Ahn (https://lnkd.in/eGwniwmK). You'll learn how Duolingo was designed: * to make learning as addictive as social media * by understanding that Duolingo couldn’t compete with social media but could become addictive by providing meaning and value * by using gamification elements such as progress bars and bite-sized lessons Von Ahn makes the story immediate, immersive, fun and easy to understand. That’s a big part of the Duolingo success - design by humans, for humans: * the user need is clear - “Learn a language for free. Forever” and the goal for the app is clear - keep people learning to keep them returning * the design is simple, engaging and intuitive to navigate and use * layers of features blend to meet user needs for enjoyable, easy engagement, from task-based microcopy to friendly push notifications and different language learning exercises that include short stories Duolingo’s vision (transforming lives) and mission (make learning addictive) are essential. However, delivering is about understanding principles of user behaviour (or the Laws of UX https://lawsofux.com/), including: * what people expect based on their experiences of other apps and websites (Jakob’s Law) * flow - feeling energised and enthused by being immersed in online experiences * mental models - what we believe about how a user experience works, like whether pressing pedestrian crossing button multiple times will make the green man appear sooner (spoiler: it won’t) Find out more about starting with user needs so you can change the world with technology: https://lnkd.in/e9mvT6Tq

How much do new content designers need to know about discovering and using user needs to do useful content audits? Content audits explore what content exists, performance and what people need. However, useful audits: - start by identifying audit goals - what's the purpose of the audit, how will results be usefully used and who will decide how recommendations feed into delivery roadmaps? - analyse findings to define prioritised recommendations, either as an individual or, ideally, with other members of a multidisciplinary agile team - report back a narrative aimed at real actions and impact, so that it's not just about how things are performing, but what can and should be done to improve performance A lot of these skills are about understanding how to gather data, focus on what's essential and identify verifiable patterns, themes and findings. A user needs mindset means content designers always ask questions and look for valid data to support hypotheses. But is there another way if people don't have that user needs mindset or the confidence or skills? Your thoughts? Find out more about how anyone can shelve the fear of digital content that's out of control with some simple content audit steps: https://lnkd.in/ddR9rmys #uxdesign #userexperience #contentstrategy #contentaudit #contentmanagement #websitemanagement #digitalskills

Why do user needs matter? Because it forces you to ask 'why' you're doing anything in the user experience. That matters at every stage, from why a product or service is being created to why you're designing any kind of content. For example, when we're designing content, where, when, how and what words we use is crucial. Why are the words we use in services crucial? Because we always need to protect people from taking actions that might harm others or themselves. Victor Ponamariov's nicely done piece - How to manage dangerous actions in user interfaces (https://lnkd.in/eaMrzVzg) - is written from a developer's perspective. However, he writes with an understanding of why user needs, content design and user experience design principles matter in everyday services. Getting a loan is the example Ponamariov uses to illustrate the importance of preventing people making mistakes when they're using online services. But most of the tips Ponamariov uses aren't about coding - they're about content design and user experience design - including: - avoiding language that's vague (particularly important for making it quick, easy and clear to avoid misunderstanding) - being specific in the descriptive language - using action-oriented CTAs (calls to action) Find out more about designing better error messages to improve the user experience (and keep people safe): https://lnkd.in/eJpwK6eh #uxdesign #userexperience #servicedesign #contentdesign #userneeds #userinterface #uxui #designforhumans

Looking to understand, clear up debate or discuss common UX terms that can be baffling? Explore our A to Z of user experience design. Let's start with accessibility, which goes way beyond technical compliance and should be at the heart of meeting users' needs in UX. Content design done well has a lot of accessibility built in, not least in writing for the web principles and designing with data. Service design done well is about building for inclusivity and accessibility, designing intuitive joined up services that as many people as possible can use, as easily as possible, in their own way. However, it's all too common, even now, for accessibility to be thought of as a tickbox exercise, or one that is about 'othering' people. Accessibility done really well, starts with discovering what real people need, whatever their abilities, situation or challenges are. Removing barriers is about all of us collaborating and problem-solving, which is what user experience design should be all about. https://lnkd.in/eZwb7Svh

Featured in The Guardian today: the results of the business census run by UK Business Climate Hub, whose website Llibertat created based on Discovery work 4 years ago and are iterating according to evidence of users' needs. https://lnkd.in/eNWbV7mU Download the business net zero census report now and sign up for the webinar on 18th September: https://lnkd.in/dupZWYH2 #uxdesign #netzero #businessgrowth #carbonreduction