📓 Rob Whiting

💭 What makes digital projects different when trying to evaluate impact? 💭 Our recently published Evaluating Digital Projects guidebook explores just that. Aiming to build on existing guidance developed for public sector teams, like the Magenta Book, our new guidance is ideal for teams looking for specific advice on how to evaluate their digital and technology projects. Digital projects are diverse in their aims, delivery methods, and technology types, but there are a number of common factors that set them apart from other types of projects. These may include how digital projects are often: 🔀 Designed to be iterative and agile; changing quickly to meet user’s needs and wider organisational contexts. 🚀 Impacted by rapidly changing technologies; meaning new things can become possible or affordable during the lifecycle of a project. ⚙️ Accompanied by broader changes; to process, to organisational culture, or to technical systems. That's why digital projects need a distinct set of evaluation tools and approaches to navigate these challenges - but without much dedicated guidance for these kinds of projects, we’ve turned our digital evaluation experience into a practical set of steps that digital and evaluation teams can use as a starting point 📈 Find out more about our 18 core principles below, or read the full guidebook for an easy-to use guide that we hope can help teams assess the impact of their digital projects ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/ensY-qjE 💡To discuss how we can help with your evaluation challenges, get in touch with our Director of Commercial, Spend & Impact Johnny Hugill ([email protected]) #DigitalEvaluation #PublicSectorEvaluation #MonitoringAndEvaluation #DigitalProjects #EvaluatingDigitalProjects #Evaluation - Steffen Triebel Sam Mingoia Florence Mayo Leyre Villaizan, Disha Shanbhag Toluwanimi Segun Marco Iovino Mirat Hyder Binka Lubica Hamarova Natasha Wren Ryan Shea Alexander de Carvalho

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Accessibility is getting more important in websites. Let me or us know if you would like an accessibility audit done on your website.

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If you have experienced or witnessed bullying, harassment or discrimination against LGBTQ+ staff in the Civil Service, you can record it within the a:gender reporting tool: https://lnkd.in/ef4YUtVs It can also record historical episodes. If this kind of reporting is left to individual government departments then it can be exceedingly difficult to understand the national picture. Likewise many of those who have tried to report discrimination to their home departments have become inured to the process, because they rarely see it handled appropriately. Reporting to a:gender ensures your report goes to people who care, even if they can't impact your own case directly. Always do both if you can!

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Want to learn about the dynamics of capability building in large organisations? Check out our latest design blog, where we discuss practical approaches for embedding research practices, sustaining continuous learning, and fostering confidence in new ways of working. https://lnkd.in/eyB2e9yA

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The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is recruiting more members to join its Resources and Waste user panel to test and enhance its new digital services. The services members can preview in advance include the Local Authority Payment (LAP) scheme, among others. Members of the panel will have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences of the new services through various means, including online or in-person discussions, prototype testing, and surveys. To sign-up and/or to find out more, you can click the following link: https://lnkd.in/ey_jKQrn Additionally, DEFRA has provided an update on local authority payments from Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging. Following a review of delivery plans for the go-live of Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR) next year, the release of the Local Authority Payments (LAPs) digital function of pEPR will now take place in Spring 2025. This will allow DEFRA to release more functionality at once, which means a more complete user journey. It will also help to ensure that the right users register at the right time. This will not impact the timelines for receiving payment estimates or payments. Authorities will receive their payment estimates in November 2024 and be paid towards the end of 2025. Year 1 payment estimates will be emailed to local authority Chief Executives. Authorities can still contact the pEPR helpdesk about their payment estimates. The helpdesk’s contact details will be released soon. #DEFRA #LARAC #EPR #pEPR #LAP #ExtendedProducerResponsibility #Waste #Recycling #Resource #CollectionPackagingReforms #LocalAuthorities Sophie

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Your guide to accessibility webinars this week 📝 Find the link with all the joining details in the comments ⬇ Meet accessibility experts who will help you use the tools you already have to better effect. You'll be able to much better support yourself, your colleagues and your service users. Monday 13 May: Introduction to digital accessibility with Lizi Green from AbilityNet Tuesday 14 May: Helping bridge the disability divide with Copilot for Microsoft 365. Hear about Andy Coulter's lived experience of ADHD and neurodiversity. Wednesday 15 May: Brand inclusion - Rob Helsby from Cantarus explores why we connect more with companies that care Thursday 16 May: Hassell Inclusion's Peter Bricknell and Silktide's Christopher Fletcher share the secret reasons why your website might be undermining your reputation Friday 17 May: Expanding accessibility in the public sector with SoftwareOne and Eye-Able® - @Joseph Morley will show you to support diversity and inclusion through Microsoft and the web #A11y #GlobalAccessibilityDay

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Some useful tips in producing #Content for #MultiLingual #services in this post from Essex County Council's James Green. https://lnkd.in/ecWffHeG 🔹 Keep sentences as short as possible. 🔹 Avoid acronyms. 🔹 Avoid metaphors. 🔹 Avoid phrases that may be translated literally. 🔹 Establish how you can protect terms like project or people names. 🔹 Avoid negatives. 🔹 Be careful with phrasal verbs.

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GOV.UK Design System Community Principles: 1. Start with what exists 2. Contribute back and help others 3. Prioritise openness and honesty https://lnkd.in/gYiZPZsg

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*FREE ACCESSIBILITY AUDIT ALERT* 🚨 If you're operating in the public sector, listen up... The UK government is enforcing stricter accessibility standards, so your digital services (including your website!) must meet WCAG 2.2 level AA - or risk breaking the law! Not really sure what this means for you? Milk & Tweed are offering a FREE accessibility audit to help you see if your site complies. ✅ Email [email protected] to enquire today. #Accessibility #WebsiteAudit #Compliance #WebsiteDesign #WebsiteUpdates

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Interesting to see a few discussion recently (like this one from TPXimpact | B Corp™'s Thomas Kohut) around how we need to evolve the Government Digital Service Service Standards and Standards Assessments to better reflect modern ways-of-working. “Sometimes meeting user needs is not the most important thing, despite being the primary focus of an assessment.” https://lnkd.in/eQymkV-9

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The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Accessibility Overlays for Blind and Low Vision Users #accessibility #overlays #research research paper (PDF) https://lnkd.in/e4gQZi5V

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Following a recent discussion I was looking at the way #ServiceStandards have been created and are applied across; 🇬🇧 GOV.UK - https://lnkd.in/enT9FbTN 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The Scottish Government - https://lnkd.in/e6HSPBMK and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Llywodraeth / Centre for Digital Public Services / Canolfan Gwasanaethau Cyhoeddus Digidol - https://lnkd.in/eMDNaH5a Interesting in itself that the devolved authorities have their own #Standards to work to for Public #Services but also interesting to see where these Standards ↔️ align and where they 🔀 don't. Some complex considerations come into play when designing #Services that affect people across the #UK, how do Teams prioritise standards? What happens if a standard for one region contradicts another? Some ❓ questions for folks; ⤵️ 1️⃣ Have you worked on project where any issues have been caused by working to multiple Service Standards? If so, how did you resolve these? 2️⃣ Do you think there is an argument for merging these into one UK-wide set of Service Standards? If so, which ones would you include and how would you prioritise these?

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How do service designers do service design without partnering with user research? In the absence of UR, we’re just left with service maps that look nice. How are decisions made off the back of that? And when debating don’t talk about democratisation of UR, because that is just people marking their own homework and breaching research codes of conduct if not experienced and trained appropriately to mitigate aspects such as bias, quality of research as well as participant care. I’m proud to be a dedicated user researcher why do people sell out on our discipline? Don’t conflate democratisation with UR as a team sport. Why this constant need to debase user research by promoting that UR can be done by anybody? Now off to learn how to code and tomorrow I will be developer. #evidenceleddecisionmaking #userresearch

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#Wireframing seems to be a bit of a lost art these days with #Designs often seeming in a rush to reach a higher fidelity state through tools like Figma or frameworks like the GovUK #Prototype kit (https://lnkd.in/eaxNmfzk). But the benefits of working in a lower fidelity to bring forward design ideas for discussion or to allow for earlier testing can be invaluable to a Team. So, if you are interested in how #Wireframes can support the work you are doing, here is a round up of tools to make use of. ⤵ 🔸 Balsamiq - One of the pioneers in the field of digital wireframing and still producing an excellent product and set of associated resources - https://balsamiq.com 🔸 Tiny UX - A #MobileFirst wireframing tool - https://www.tinyux.app 🔸 Excalidraw - An in-browser wireframing tool that offers live #Collaboration - https://excalidraw.com 🔸 Frame0 - A new to market tool that allows you to make hand-drawn style wireframes quickly and easily. - https://frame0.app 🔸 Wire Frame Sketcher - A wireframing tool that helps #Designers, #Developers and #ProductManagers quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. - https://lnkd.in/e-zxCb5U Do you use a wireframing tool not listed above? Or do you have any great tips and advice for those looking to make more use of wireframes in their design process? If so, please share in the comments. ⤵ Thanks.

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A very useful and handy Accessibility Checklist For Designers (PDF: https://lnkd.in/e9Z2G2kF) by Geri Reid and Dave Musson It provides practical guidelines for integrating accessibility into design from the outset.

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