Design principles - Digital service standard
The Digital Service Standard is a set of 14 criteria to help government create and run good digital services.
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1 Understand users and their needs
Develop a deep understanding of users and the problem you’re trying to solve for them.
Summary
Take time to understand users’ needs and the problem you’re trying to solve for them.
Think about people’s entire experience and the systems and processes around the product or service you’re building.
Why it’s important
You need to understand your users and their needs (opens in new tab) to build something that helps them. Otherwise you could build the wrong thing or make DfE services more difficult to use.
Understanding as much of the context of the user needs as possible will give you the best chance of meeting them in the most simple, cost effective way.
The most obvious problem is not always the one that needs solving. Test assumptions early and often to reduce the risk of building the wrong thing.
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2 Solve a whole problem for users
Work towards creating a service that solves one whole problem for users, collaborating across organisational boundaries where necessary.
Summary
Consider where your service fits in your users’ journey and whether you can solve a whole problem or influence a wider solution.
Collaborate across teams, programmes and other services to create a service that meets users’ needs across all channels in the end-to-end journey. For example, if users have to come in and then out of the service again to reach their end goal, what would that look like.
Why it’s important
People often do not know how education services fit together. It helps if you can bring things together into a journey which makes sense to users, irrespective of which organisation they belong to or channel they use.
You may not be able to fix a whole problem, but you may be able to improve it and support or influence a wider solution.
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3 Provide a joined up experience across all channels
Work towards creating a service that meets users’ needs across all channels, including online, phone, paper and face to face.
Summary
Consider where your service fits into a wider journey or alongside other DfE services, and how it will join up across channels.
This involves understanding how the online and offline parts of your service link together and any pain points users experience as a result of this.
Why it’s important
If a service moves between channels, for example, email, contact centres, paper forms or in person, and you bring those different channels together, you can design an experience that reduces friction for users.
Understanding where your user needs fit into wider journeys can help to solve a whole problem for users.
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4 Make the service simple to use
Build a service that’s simple, intuitive and comprehensible. And test it with users to make sure it works for them.
Summary
Build a service that’s simple to use so that people can succeed first time. Test it with users to make sure it works for them.
Why it’s important
People expect services to work. They need things to be easy when they are trying to complete a task or find information. As a public sector organisation we have a legal duty to consider everyone’s needs when designing and delivering services.
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5 Make sure everyone can use the service
Provide a service that everyone can use, including disabled people and people with other legally protected characteristics. And people who do not have access to the internet or lack the skills or confidence to use it.
Summary
Make sure your service can be used by people with different physical, mental, social, cultural or learning needs, whether it’s for the public, for staff working in DfE or across the education sector.
Champion the needs of all users and include them as part of the design and iterative process. Consider where these users are on the digital inclusion scale.
Why it’s important
Everyone who works on HS2 digital services has a role to play in making them accessible and inclusive.
Important: Warning
If your service isn’t accessible to everyone who needs it, you may be breaking the 2010 Equality Act.
Accessibility regulations say that public sector websites must meet accessibility standards and publish an accessibility statement. You can find out more about the regulations on GOV.UK
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6 Have a multidisciplinary team
Put in place a multidisciplinary team that can create and operate the service in a sustainable way.
Summary
It’s important to have a diverse mix of the skills and roles needed to build and operate the service.
Make as many decisions as possible as a team, so that you can respond quickly to what you learn about users and their needs.
Why it’s important
A team with a range of expertise and perspectives is more likely to come up with the best solution. The size and roles you’ll need will change as you build the service.
When planning for a team, for the next phase, think about how much it would cost to build and the roles you might need.
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7 Use agile ways of working
We’re not designing for a screen, we’re designing for people. We need to think hard about the context in which they’re using our services. Are they in a library? Are they on a phone? Are they only really familiar with Facebook? Have they never used the web before?
Summary
Agile is a way of working that encourages teams to build quickly, test what they’ve built and iterate their work based on regular feedback and other useful data.
Use agile principles and tools (for example, Trello, Lucid and Jira) and have processes in place that follow the governance principles for service delivery.
Why it's important
By getting your service in front of real users as soon as possible you can get insights on how they use it and iterate based on what you learn.
Working this way means you’re not specifying everything up front before you’ve developed an understanding of what users need, you will reduce the risk of delivering the wrong thing.
- Researching in context by Amy Everett
- Hey GOV.UK, what are you doing about voice? by Sam Dub and Mark Hurrell
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8 Iterate and improve frequently
Make sure you have the capacity, resources and technical flexibility to iterate and improve the service frequently.
Summary
Make sure you have the capacity, people and technical flexibility to iterate and improve the service frequently, focusing on improvements that deliver the most value.
Why it’s important
Services are never ‘finished’. Once you’ve got real people using your service, you need to iterate and improve it.
This means more than doing basic maintenance, like fixing bugs in code or deploying security patches. It means responding to feedback and changes in user needs and behaviour, and technology. It also means being able to make substantial improvements through the service’s lifetime.
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9 Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Evaluate what data the service will be collecting, storing and providing.
Summary
Understand What data and information your service will be collecting from users, and how this will be stored and used. Identify and address security threats, legal responsibilities, confidentiality, privacy issues and risks associated with the service. Consult experts where you need to.
Why it’s important
We have a legal duty to protect personal and sensitive information. Failing to do so would undermine public trust in HS2 services.
HS2 service and project teams must understand the importance of protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive information. This includes being aware of risks that reduce the security of the information, and taking action to mitigate.
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10 Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Work out what success looks like for your service and identify metrics which will tell you what’s working and what can be improved, combined with user research.
Summary
Service teams will need to work out what success looks like for their HS2 service. Collect performance information across all online and offline channels so that you can measure and show that the service is effective and improving.
Why it’s important
Having clear objectives, a definition of what success looks like and appropriate metrics can help you know whether the service is solving the problem it’s meant to solve.
Collecting the right information and interpreting it will alert you to potential improvements you need to make and help you know if changes have the effect you intend.
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11 Choose the right tools and technology
Choose tools and technology that let you create a high quality service in a cost effective way. Minimise the cost of changing direction in future.
Summary
Choose tools and technology that let you build a good service in an efficient, cost effective way.
Build a sustainable service which allows you to change direction in future.Why it’s important
When you make a decision about technology, you’re making a significant investment. The choices you make will have a huge impact on your ability to create, iterate and operate the service in a flexible, sustainable way.
It’s important to make sure you’re not working on your own and use learnings from other teams or services where possible. Always try to align technology choices with other HS2 teams. The more common components that are created and used the more efficient you can be in building a great service that meets the Service Standard.
When you make a decision about tools, look across HS2 to see what’s currently being used. Align with tools being used across other HS2 communities as much as possible.
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12 Make new source code open
Make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences. Or if this isn’t possible, provide a convincing explanation of why this can’t be done for specific subsets of the source code.
Summary
Teams should aim to make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences.
Why it’s important
Public services are built with public money. So unless there’s a good reason not to the code they’re based on, should be made available for other people to reuse and build on.
Open source code can save teams duplicating effort and help them build better services faster. And publishing source code under an open licence means that you’re less likely to get locked into working with a single supplier.
Coding in the open is a good way to encourage high quality and secure coding in development teams.
There may be times when code should not be published in the open. For example, secrets, keys or sensitive information should not be published to public repositories. DfE has guidance on managing secrets and closed code.
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13 Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Build on open standards and common components and patterns from inside and outside government.
Summary
Use open standards, common components and patterns, and create new ones if there is not one that already meets your needs.
Why it’s important
Open standards saves money and makes use of best practice.
Using common components, patterns and technology stacks means you do not have to solve problems that have already been solved. By using a component, pattern or stack that’s already been assured and extensively tested, you can provide users with a good experience in a cost effective way. It also speeds up delivery and reduces risk.
We encourage teams to develop components and patterns that meet a shared need, it’s important to share them so that others can benefit from your work.
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14 Operate a reliable service
Minimise service downtime and have a plan to deal with it when it does happen.
Summary
Ensure your service is available for use at the time users need to access it. Where a service is unavailable, have a plan to deal with its recovery.
Why it’s important
Users expect to be able to use HS2 services when they need to.
There are some HS2 services that are only available at certain times of the year. However, this should not mean that services do not operate reliably outside of these times. For example, if a school needs to access a service in an emergency.
