{"id":1457,"date":"2014-08-07T14:43:40","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T14:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2017-07-20T09:21:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T09:21:22","slug":"alpha-now-available-scottish-government-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2014\/08\/07\/alpha-now-available-scottish-government-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpha now available to Scottish Government staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a post by Tom Meade, our Programme Manager<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been working on an alpha release for the past 10 weeks, learning a lot along the way. So what is the alpha? Alpha is our way of trying to see if we\u2019re doing the right thing for our users. It\u2019s our ambition that overtime, mygov.scot will become the main channel that people use to access public services in Scotland.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Building a living, breathing website<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had a single scrum team developing a fully functional proof of concept for five, two week sprints. This isn\u2019t just a clickable prototype, it is an actual living, breathing website \u2013 an end-to-end working solution that we think represents all the key aspects of what\u00a0mygov.scot<\/span><\/a>\u00a0will be. It will help us to\u00a0find out what you think\u00a0\u2013 what works and what doesn\u2019t work, so that we can make improvements for the benefit of everyone who uses it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Putting users at the heart of the design process<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Putting in place the foundations for an in-house user research lab allowed us to observe people using iterations of alpha and understand what worked and what didn\u2019t. At the end of each two week sprint, we got real people to tell us what they thought. Naturally this led to our thought process adapting and changing based upon the findings. We don\u2019t have everything worked out, various design decisions and content considerations still have us scratching our heads.<\/span><\/p>\n

What went in to alpha?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We thought about what would go into a representational product and what things we were unsure of \u2013 both allowing us to get early feedback on the site. We know that the small offering of user needs being met won\u2019t offer long term value to users, however knowing how users interact with the content and meeting those needs, offers a huge opportunity for learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve tried to create alpha based upon our understanding of what we think the product should look like. Our approach to meeting user needs has focused on breadth and depth.<\/span><\/p>\n