Creating a Get help buying for schools (GHBS) campaign-style page
Helping DfE operate in a commercial market
INSIGHT
Schools aren't aware that there is a free government procurement service, which could save them time and money compared to a commercial, paid-for service
As a non-mandatory service in direct competition with commercial procurement services, Get Help Buying for Schools (GHBS) is a free and impartial DfE procurement service offering help and advice to people who buy for schools and multi-academy trusts across England.
There is a need to show schools the benefits of using GHBS over others, for example, GHBS is government-run, impartial and offers completely free advice and support to schools throughout their procurement process. User research and anecdotal evidence show that unscrupulous consultants and suppliers take advantage of some schools. GHBS want to make sure that it stops this from happening by persuading schools that they are a trustworthy source of help that can give them better service and more excellent value.
AGENCY/CLIENT
Department for Education
SECTOR
Public sector
ROLE
Senior interaction designer
IDEA
Schools need to see why GHBS are clearly the better choice, and what the benefits are of using this service. They need to be able to compare GHBS with the competition and to decide if GHBS are right for them.
I worked with the GHBS Digital team to design a concept campaign-style page that will help schools make these comparisons more easily.
The aim of this campaign-style page is to address why schools should use GHBS compared to a commercial, paid-for service. It will then signpost users to the right part of the service if they want more information. This page will also need to build awareness of the service, even before schools need to buy anything. It’s there to set the scene, giving users a picture of what to expect, and what the GHBS service provides as a whole.
WORK
Initial concepts for campaign page
Initial concepts for campaign page user feedback
During user testing, users said the initial design concepts felt 'familiar' and had a similar look and feel to existing DfE communications they were receiving. This was intentional as I was mindful that the content on this page would link directly to procurement guidance, manuals and support journeys on GOV.UK, and too much of a shift away from these established components could be jarring on landing.
Getting the design right - design requirements workshop
Although this concept met the requirements of the brief, the feedback from stakeholders was that it needed to appear ‘more attractive’ to potential prospects.
The initial design concept was closely aligned with the design aesthetic and tone of voice of GOV.UK because the purpose of GOV.UK is not to sell a service to schools. GOV.UK content is focused on getting users to do the task at hand – it is task oriented. Creating a design that was more 'marketing and sales focused', meant that this campaign-style page will need to be hosted on its own custom URL, and not on GOV.UK. This will provide more freedom to create a more visually impactful and persuasive custom design.
On receiving an updated brief, I facilitated a virtual design requirements workshop to unpack the requirements for the second iteration. The brief wasn't that much different from the first, and the only real change to this design was to make it 'more attractive'.
The workshop consisted of two 2 hour sessions over 2 days.
Tasks included:
• competitor analysis
• writing user stories (based on the user verbatim from the user testing)
• brand positioning
• content prioritisation
User verbatim from the user testing were used to help identify assumed user needs
Competitor analysis of 5 other school procurement services followed by affinity mapping the output
Balancing the needs
With the output of the design requirements workshop, I worked with the content designers from the GHBS digital team, to make sure the focus of the page was correct, and that the user's needs were considered along with the business need.
We started with what users told us they needed based on user research, which pointed to the need for better management of our user’s expectations. Users also wanted to know more about the service and what it offers.
The flow of the page was carefully constructed to take into account both new and repeat users. Clear call-to-actions were added to the top of the page allowing new users to learn about the service and repeat users to access the service straight away. This is in keeping with the task-oriented mindset that we saw in user research.
For users who are not so sure, the remaining content was grouped and chunked up on the page to make reading easy. Links away from the page were reduced to help users focus on the content. Headings and subtitles were introduced to help users instantly recognise what the information is trying to relay.
The thinking is to enable schools to quickly absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time, without the feeling of doing a laborious task.
Content prioritisation based on output from the user research and design requirements workshop
Wireframes of initial thinking for layout and content hierarchy
Current design concept specifically to promote Get help buying for schools service.
