research plan spring 2017
We want to conduct product-specific, user-centered research for the U.S. Web Design Standards to continue to make incremental improvements to the product post-1.0 launch and to honor the design principles behind the product. This research, ideally, will be conducted sometime during Q3 of 2017 and be done in-person with teams actively using or considering the U.S. Web Design Standards.
The research from last fall has helped guide and focus the team, which has allowed us to finally hit the 1.0 milestone. A fresh round of research will provide the team with refreshed perspective, inspiration, and focus as the team continues to support and mature the product. As with all our research, any findings and areas of focus will be published for all users of the Standards to benefit.
There is a clear demand for additional and more advance U.S. Web Design Standard components. While the team has some ideas on what should be added, and previous research, we want this to be a focused area of the research to help build out the product backlog.
The most common use of the U.S. Web Design Standards today is to create content based websites. However, there is a potential need to use the Standards for things like mobile applications, web applications, enterprise and open source content management systems, and more.
We’d like to explore training models and better channels to better partner with federal agencies and other programs. This partnership could increase the adoption and use of the U.S. Web Design Standards, and help the team create targeted pitches and other sales material. This is critical to the long term funding and development of the product.
The current brand of the Standards website doesn’t match some of the design guidance that’s present in the component library. Also, the name of the product has been known to be a potential barrier for teams adopting the Standards.
The team would like to determine the metrics that can be tracked to determine overall impact of the U.S. Web Design Standards. Also, we want to find ways to support other teams getting set up and using DAP if they choose to use the U.S. Web Design Standards.
The digital landscape is ever evolving and there are some teams within the federal government that are more likely than others to take advantage of new technologies like conversational design, augmented reality, and virtual reality. While we have no plans currently around this type of technology, we want to understand where the high level needs are so that future versions of the Standards can easily support them when it becomes appropriate.
Federal digital service teams need additional and more advanced components to support their products.
Agencies want to partner with the U.S. Web Design Standards team to advance use of the Standards.
Federal digital service teams desire a more informed and more efficient experience using the online resources for the Standards.
Digital service teams are beginning to experiment with new technologies that the Standards currently don't support.
The Standards team can draw some lessons and understanding directly from other teams who are building and maintaining design systems.
We need to recruit a representative sample of people who are using or considering to use the U.S. Web Design Standards and teams who are building and maintaining design systems for their own organizations. These participants should be a other federal digital service teams and teams inside and outside of the government working on design systems.
From he federal digital service teams, we want to target teams that are currently using the Standards or have plans to use the Standards in the near future:
The point of contact for all recruitment is Brad Nunnally - brad.nunnally@gsa.gov
The goals of the design team during this research phase will be to investigate the following:
- Learn the current uses of the U.S. Web Design Standards by observing federal digital service teams.
- Seek advice and lessons learned from other teams building and maintaining design systems.
- Inventory future needs of the U.S. Web Design Standards
- Investigate future needs of the U.S. Web Design Standards with teams exploring emerging technologies.
The methods to be used during this research phase will be user interviews and contextual observation with individual users in Washington D.C and remotely around the U.S..
Research team will meet with members of the project team using the U.S Web Design Standards. The research team will attempt to elicit stories from the project team about considering or adopting the standards and how well the standards have supported their development efforts and what might be missing.
Members of the research team will pair up with members of the project team using the draft web design standards to observe them working or getting a demo of the product that is using the standards. The hope is to learn from both designers and developers and observe first-hand how they’ve implemented the standards.
For the purposes of this research, we will need to recruit 7-10 digital service teams in and around the Washington D.C. area, and 3-4 design systems teams within and external to the federal government to be interview either in person or remotely.
For each location, the team will need to have the following items on hand:
- GSA-issued Macbooks
- PC mouse
- table, chairs
- Wi-Fi hotspot
- (If in person) Research team should wear their government-issued badge and have it visible to the participant at all times.
- Research team should be dressed in business casual attire.
- Participants will need to sign a consent form (see attached). Scan and forward the signed ones to .
- Research team should ensure that no PII data is captured. Participants should input fake data if needed.
- ????
Below is the proposed schedule for sessions. Each session will last between 30 and 45 minutes.
Location (Arrive at Field Office by X:XX)
- Brad Nunnally (Lead moderator)
- email: brad.nunnally@gsa.gov
- Shawn Allen
- John Donmoyer
- Will Sullivan
Schedule by day:
DAY DATE
- Travel
- Pilot tests and logistics check
DAY DATE
- 9:00 - 10:30
- 11:00 - 12:30
- BREAK
- 2:00 - 3:30
- 4:00 - 5:30
DAY DATE
- 9:00 - 10:30
- 11:00 - 12:30
- BREAK
- 2:00 - 3:30
- 4:00 - 5:30
DAY DATE
- 9:00 - 10:30
- 11:00 - 12:30
- BREAK
- 2:00 - 3:30
- 4:00 - 5:30
LOCATION Field Office
STREET ADDRESS
CITY, STATE ZIP CODE
POINT OF CONTACT
Ph: PHONE NUMBER
Email: EMAIL ADDRESS
Map: MAP LINK
NOTE: SPECIAL LOCATION NOTE
My name is [your name] and I'm working with U.S Web Design Standards on making improvements product itself and how we can better service our users.
We were hoping to grab between 60 and 90 minutes of your time to get your feedback on U.S Web Design Standards. If you have the time, we’d like to ask you to participate in a team interview so the U.S. Web Design Standards team can learn about your current experience with the Standards.
Your participation in this activity is completely voluntary, and we will not ask for more than 45 minutes of your time. If at any time you'd like to end our session, that is your right and we will gladly wrap things up.
Are you interested in participating?
YES or NO checkpoint
- If Yes - Continue
- If No - Thank them for their time and excuse yourself.
Thank you again for agreeing to participate. I will be moderating this session and you will notice others joining the session, as well. They are observing the session and taking notes to ensure we don’t miss anything.
We will take the following precautions to keep your responses anonymous:
- We will not write your name on our interview notes
- We will not label our recordings of our interview with your name.
- We keep the list of people we interviewed, our notes, and the recording in a secure place where only team members can access it.
- We will not ask for, or collection, any information that easily identifies you.
This consent form summarizes this information. [Hand over consent form.]
At the bottom, you can choose whether we may share quotes from your interview. Unless you give us permission, we will not share any quotes from your interview (even anonymized ones) outside our project team. If you’re open to us sharing quotes in reports to our project team or in blog posts that describe our project, check the box below the signature lines.
Take a few minutes to read over the consent form and sign the consent form. Feel free to ask me any questions that come up!
Do you have any questions for me before you get started? You can also ask questions at any point during the interview.
- Can you tell me a little bit about your role and how you are using the standards?
- How long have you been working on this project? Where is this project in terms of development cycle (is it just starting, or has it been in production for a while)?
Thanks again for taking the time to share with us how you are working with the standards. This is really helpful for us in deciding on where we should go in the next phase of development. We hope that future improvements will help make it even easier for you to use the standards in your projects!
Do you have any questions for us?