Client:
DLUHC
When:
Jan 2024
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) is a ministerial department that supports communities across the UK.
Summary: Designing a digital tool, using PowerApps, to support charities when they are matching Afghan families with community groups as part of the resettlement scheme in the UK.
Outcomes: Defined pain points and user needs, service maps, journey maps, wireframes, tested and iterated prototype and app built on PowerApps. Usability testing with the 5 main charitable organisations involved in community sponsorship.
“You recognised that something needed doing and arranged to work with the right people to move it forwards. You are an excellent team player as well.”
Feedback from M.S. - Lead Delivery Manager
Discovery:
How might we ensure voluntary and charity organisations have what they need to provide Afghan families, eligible for the Community Sponsorship Scheme, with somewhere safe to live in the UK?
The problem:
There was some research into similar forms of community sponsorship and the process that charity organisations go through to match families to sponsor groups. I mapped the whole process of community sponsorship using prior research, desk research and accounts from an ‘engagement’ day with multiple organisations. Our users for this project were the charity organisations.
Speaking with users, we found that for the majority, the ‘matching’ process was inefficient due to:
the reliance on spreadsheets which are often out of date
not having one source for finding information
the detail needed for successful matches was not easily visible
The minimum viable service we aimed to create had to provide users with up-to-date, detailed information on Afghan families so that charity organisations could make successful matches.
I used the discovery findings to map out the user journey and sketch early design concepts.
To guide my iterations, I shared the early ideas and concepts with the wider team and internal stakeholders for feedback, especially on conforming to policy requirements. The concepts were tested with users.
Using the research findings, work from the discovery and the GDS style guide, I created a prototype of the app using Figma and PowerBI components.
The prototype was tested in usability sessions with five users who were given tasks to complete:
find suitable Afghan families
save these families to a 'shortlist' for matching with community sponsors
view individual family records and update their matching status
I used the feedback from user testing to iterate the designs.
I then worked with the PowerApps engineer, product owner and business analyst to write acceptance criteria and build my designs.
Once the app was built, I worked with the researcher to conduct a private beta with five organisations, using data provided by the Home Office.
Design process:
Mission patch by me as a way to acknowledge and celebrate the team milestones in the project.