Being Principled

More and more digital teams are sharing their ‘principles’ these days and we are currently having a hard look at some of our own at work. As soon as we have something worth talking about I’ll publish them here of course but the process has got me thinking about previous encounters with this idea.

While GDS kickstarted the current trend (within the public sector/academic world anyway) with their extremely useful 10 Design Principles the first time I was really aware of the idea of a set of underpinning principles for a web team was from another high profile British institution. The BBC.

Back in 2006 the BBC embarked on the BBC 2.0 project (a name so wonderfully of its day) and as a part of this the project team (led by Tom Loosemore later of GDS) published a set of 15 Web Principles that reflected the best thinking on how to approach a major web project at the time. The fascinating thing is just how many of those high level principles still hold today (not the mention of Second Life though – there was never any excuse for that!)

It goes to show that ‘best practice’ has been available for quite a few years now and that while people will often pay lip service to the ideals of ‘user first’ designs and service it takes real work and a laser focus to actually make this a reality. Not to mention real buy in and support across any organisation trying it because the reality is it is hard and forces people to think differently.

Here are a few examples of other principles that have been shared since GDS opened the floodgates;

– Bath University Digital Delivery Principles
– Jisc Design Principles
– Bristol Museums Digital Principles

For a wider list check out this site – a great resource.

Survey significance

Last week we launched a survey over on the website to capture some up to date feedback from our users.

The questions are quite a bit different than past ‘satisfaction surveys’ we have undertaken for a couple of reasons. For a start we are pretty sure what the underlying level of satisfaction is with the site. Anecdotal feedback continues to come in via social media, our call centre and general conversation with our users and we know the site, while slowly improving, remains a long way from meeting expectations.

There are plans in process to speed up improvements with some significant changes before Christmas and then early in 2014 but for more fundamental changes we need to get better at understanding about how and why people use the site and that is the main reason for the change in the survey.

While ONS has embraced using a user-driven approach for some time it is clear that the profile of our user base is changing (or at least widening) and the aim of this survey is to give us a foundation in to understanding the goals of our users (as well as their backgrounds). This will underpin some work being doing by Pure Usability for us to start coming up with a new set of personas for us to use and also for us to get a clearer idea of some high level user stories. Clearly the survey itself is just one element and we’ll be backing it up with interviews, analytics data and workshops but it is a vital part.

We are closely following the guidance from the Government Digital Service and are currently undertaking what they refer to as the ‘Discovery‘ phase where user research is key. The more we know the better informed decisions made about future developments will be and the happier everyone will end up.

We will share the outcomes of this research (and everything else we undertake) here on the blog and as ever we welcome any comments.

The Infographic Superhighway

One of the first things that struck me when I joined the ONS back in May was the organisational obsession with the concept of the ‘infographic‘.

They had found almost universal support amongst our statistical teams as a format for improving the communication of our outputs and had been pretty well received by users. The media in particular seemed to be fans which reinforced the popularity of the infographics internally.

There were concerns though. There was a lack of common understanding of what made up an ‘infographic’ with some of our outputs leaning more towards the ‘digital poster’ (in some cases even an ‘infaux-graphic’)  and there was certainly some bending of the brand guidance and a devotion to a certain, popular infographic format (the looonnng thin version) to the detriment of any other others. Also the requirement for an infographic was becoming the default whether the stats provided a particular strong visual story or not.

One of the things ONS is rightly proud of is our highly regarded ‘Data Visualisation Centre’, led by Alan Smith. This team produces a number of brilliant interactive data visualisations every year and also leads a course for members of the Government Statistical Service (the most popular course offered) delving in to the methodology of data visualisation. Ensuring any visualisations carrying the ONS logo are accurate is a key aspect of their work and so infographics needed to meet these standards as well.

I decided early on that I really needed to get a handle of this aspect of my job. The thing is I am no designer and lack the methodological know how to really to make a difference.

That said like the ad used to say “I know a man who can.”

Robin Richards runs a studio in Bristol where he specialises in data visualisation and infographic work. He has worked for a lot of big firms in the digital space (including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare) as well as elsewhere and I decided to bring him in to help our design team come up with some internal guidelines (and supporting resources) to help focus our infographic work and really to clarify our thinking and processes as much as the brand stuff.

Robin worked with Nick our Head of Design to come up with what I think are an extremely useful set of guidelines that are already having an impact on our team (as I write this I am listening to an infographic sketching session taking place behind me.) I am not going to say they are perfect and I am sure there will be further iterations in the months to come but having done my share of research around this topic I think the guys have produced a document that stands up against anything out there.

The one thing that is lacking is a HTML version of the guidelines – probably a mis-step on my part given we are a digital team!

You can download the Infographic Guidelines v1.0 here though and we welcome your feedback.

Weeknote 11

No Welsh this week – I could translate to Bristolian but that might be a language too far for Google Translate!

Last week was a busy one content wise for the team – releases around death, in both the avoidable and unavoidable categories, two stories about construction figures, something on civil partnerships as well as the Civil Services statistics being published meant that the editorial, social media and design teams all had their hands full.

The visual supporting the Civil Service release proved popular as well as very useful for me in a meeting with other civil servants on Thursday where I was able to pull it up on my iPad to demonstrate a particular point I was trying (and failing) to make.

The internal sell of the new infographics guide continued last week. There have been a couple of understandable concerns raised which we’ll address but in general they have been well received. We’ll share them here on this blog in the very near future.

There was a major meeting to discuss the future of our site search as well – this has multiple parallel strands of activity but the core element is a move to the open source engine Solr. We aren’t expecting any one thing to magically fix things but hopefully the combination of the changes we are making will aggregate up to something useful.

I attended the Government Heads of Digital Communication meeting hosted by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills where I listened to a very interesting presentation from the Aldermore Bank digital team. It was nice to get some insights from outside the public sector for a change and they introduced some ideas and tools that I immediately jotted down.

The trouble with publishing

Guest post from Rachel our Publishing Support Manager.

The ‘Code of Practice’ from the UK Statistics Authority states;

Issue statistical releases at the standard time of 9.30am on a weekday, to maintain consistency and to permit time for users to understand and respond to the information during normal working hours.

You might think that publishing web content at exactly 09.30 wouldn’t pose much of a challenge in this day and age, but alas it isn’t so. At least not with our current processes and technologies.

ONS publishes almost 750 statistical releases a year and the move from PDF to HTML publishing means that each release is now made up of dozens of individual components – charts, tables, datasets and commentary.  On our busiest releases days we can have up to 500 individual components all racing through the system to hit the website for 09.30.

On top of the sheer volume of content, we have the complication that a lot of the content we publish is market sensitive. Because of its sensitive nature it means we can’t release it from our internal systems until moments before 09.30, creating the smallest of publishing windows.

It’s something that we’ve been puzzling over for a while. Until now most of the focus has been on seeking technical solutions to improve how quickly we publish and to simplify our systems. But that’s just part of the story. Part of improving our efficiency and consistency with publishing will be to look at our business processes. We’re just about to start a study, comparing our processes with those of other organisations with similar publishing pressures and constraints.

So, is there anyone out there who’s struggling with the same issues? If so, we’d love to chat to you about your experiences. You can get in touch via idp@ons.gsi.gov.uk

Noddiau’r Wythnos 1 (#weeknote)

Siwmae, croeso i’r “weeknotes”.

I’m Lisa, and I’m the Welsh speaking  communications manager for Digital Publishing Division.

This is the very first weeknotes, and my first blog post for that matter, unless you count the editorial role I played with the recent post on our subscription provider.

As I don’t work a Friday, our week notes refers to what we did the previous week and may even include some of the what’s coming up, if  I’m a bit low on content.

So what’s been happening? Well firstly the most used word of last week had to be interviews! Recruitment to bring the team up to full strength has been underway for some time due to a number of reasons, which those of you  involved in recruiting the civil service way.will be able to empathise with. We have now filled most of the roles that were advertised in our post Join the team and look forward to the experience and expertise these people will bring.

Secondly, a lot of last week was taken up with the work we are doing to improve the search functionality of our site.  Consultancy firm Flax, experts in open source search solutions, interviewed a range of internal and external users of the website to get a feel for the main issues and understand what the priorities need to be. We had involvement from academics, media researchers, economists and business professionals to ensure that the changes we make benefit the user journey experience for everyone.

Thirdly, infographics and how to use them, have been an ongoing issue since the organisation began embracing them (a little too hard some might say). Over the last few weeks our in-house  design specialists have been working with an industry expert to produce a set of guidelines to help with producing and publishing infographics to a consistent high standard.

Other stuff includes developments in the way we engage through our social media channels, building on the success of our  GDP storify as well as working with our statisticians to help them monitor their own releases using hootsuite – so watch this space to see how that works out.

Join the team

One of the goals for the new Digital publishing team here at the ONS is to build our in-house capability for digital work. We have a separate division here that handles the development and web operations side of things so for now it is mainly about building a team that is an ‘intelligent customer’ for those elements and is focused on publishing, editorial and front-end improvements.

With this in mind we have a number of roles being advertised from today.

Head of User Insight and Innovation

In my opinion this has the potential to be a great job. It will oversee the web analytics, social media and stakeholder communications teams as well as having a remit to identify and prototype more innovative products. There will also be some cross-over with the open data activities that the organisation is starting to become more engaged in so some interest or understanding of that would also be of benefit. In fact in many ways this is a ‘data’ job. Really I am looking for someone who can take the analysis of our existing ‘intelligence’ to the next level and really provide the insights that will help drive the entire programme of work.

Product Manager (x2)

I’m looking for two of these roles – one will focus on the Economics side of the organisation, the other the Social. Pre-existing knowledge of statistics and these fields isn’t mandatory but any interest is going to be helpful. These people are going to be the face of my team out in the business. They will work with business areas to identify the best products or channels, help prototype ideas, lead the communications with the design and development teams and basically be the glue that holds the whole thing together. They’ll contribute to this blog and our Twitter channel and really help set the direction of our public facing work.

Front-end Developer

This is going to be a key role for us as things start to get moving. Really we want someone who is a bit of a ‘jack of all trades’; HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as all the Adobe CS stuff. Familiarity with any frameworks like D3.js or Highcharts would be a major plus. We have a talented design team and a lot of ideas but we need to work more quickly in getting them to a prototype stage as well as meet the growing demand for interactive tools to display and manipulate our data. It is going to be varied and sometimes challenging work but it is work that will have a considerable audience.

—————————–

There are considerable benefits to working with the Civil Service but there are real challenges as well. There is a real opportunity to make a difference in these roles but to be clear we are not the Government Digital Service. This is a much more traditional organisation with many of the bureaucratic and security challenges that GDS have been able to bypass.

If anyone is interested about any of these roles then feel free to contact me – matt.jukes@ons.gsi.gov.uk

What went wrong? 27th June 2013

Last Thursday we had a considerable publishing problem that prevented us from getting the Quarterly National & UK Economic accounts datasets up in anything close to a timely manner.

Chris Giles from the FT was the first to notice;

Really @statisticsONS can be annoying. Still got April's data set on its website. Come on ONS

— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) June 27, 2013

Given all the issues the website has had over the last couple of years you would have thought we would be prepared for anything but this was a new problem and all the standard remeidial actions the development and support teams undertook were unsuccessful which is why there was such a delay.

The problem, once identified, was deceptively simple. Both the datasets that failed had character encoding issues due to unrecognised characters that essentially choked the automated process that creates and publishes the datasets.Now this has been identified we will be able to mitigate against it in the future but for now we can only apologise.

The ONS website…the story so far.

The current version of the ONS website has been around for a while now and it was immediately clear at launch that it had considerable issues.

A programme of work to ‘fix’ the site has been ongoing virtually since day one of the site though many of these changes have been ‘behind the scenes’ and those that were improving the user experience were often not made obvious enough or highlighted to a wider audience.

Some of the major fixes that have been done include;

– Sorting out over 80,000 content errors (many of which were inherited but highlighted by the new system)
– Some initial efforts to improve the labelling of our statistical outputs so people could tell the difference between releases
– Some improvements to search – including about around 200 synonyms and some boosting of results according to content date. [It is safe to say that this still has a long way to go.]

Alongside these fixes there have also been efforts to respond to user feedback and improve the site rather than just fix errors. One major aspect of this has been to introduce ‘theme’ landing pages for different statistical areas within ONS. These pages use different content types, such as articles, video, and infographics, to make data accessible to a wider audience. You can visit Labour Market, Population and Crime and Justice to see some examples.

Other user focused changes that have been implemented include;

• Ability to view and subscribe to a new  key figures page directly from the ONS homepage to get the latest economic and social figures
• easily find important information through our ability to make frequently visited pages hold their content (make it sticky) and not be overwritten with updates
• get  email alerts which notify them when data or publications in their chosen themes are released
• select multiple regions for regional information
• bookmark a single page that holds all editions of a particular release, enabling them to find earlier data in one place
• access reference tables in statistical bulletin PDFs
• navigate quickly to survey respondent information via a Taking part in a survey link
• readily view interactive content within publications

Clearly despite this work the site still has significant flaws and over the next couple of weeks we’ll share information about upcoming priorities including changes to the information architecture, accessibility, making time series data easier to find and work with and probably most importantly our plans to improve the search.

Welcome to the DPD blog

Welcome to week one of the ONS Digital Publishing blog. It is actually about week eight for myself here at the ONS and week 12 for the Digital Publishing Division (DPD) itself as it only officially came in to being at the start of April this year.

The web publishing and business as usual aspect of the division is well established but the area which I have been brought in to oversee is very new. My team has a wide remit – analytics, design, editorial, social media and stakeholder communications as well as some upcoming ONS open data activity.

The ONS website has a somewhat troubled history and very recently has come in for some more very public criticism. My team is a part of a wider initiative to try answer those criticisms by providing improved digital products that are genuinely user focused and get things out in to the wild much quicker than the organisation has managed in the past.

The ONS exist outside the embrace of Government Digital Service but while we might not be working directly with them it is absolutely our intention to learn from them going forward. The Government Service Design Manual will be our blueprint and hopefully we can live up to the lofty goal of that publication and “build services so good that people prefer to use them.”

This blog is hopefully a small demonstration of this new direction. We will regularly share what we are working on and thinking about. Wherever possible we will use this blog to give readers previews of products and to elicit feedback as early as possible.

Comments are being moderated but I will endeavour to answer anything that isn’t obvious spam and in the spirit of openess you can also contact me at matt.jukes@ons.gov.uk or find me on Twitter where I am @jukesie.

Matt Jukes
Head of Digital Content