Housing Repairs

Weeknotes - 17 January 2020

The Digital Delivery team are working on an alpha project with DXW Digital Ltd, Greenwich, Lincoln and South Kesteven councils exploring approaches for the design of a common pattern for reporting, diagnosing and scheduling of housing repairs. The project is part of MHCLG’s local digital collaboration fund.

We send out week notes to update the team and stakeholders on the progress of the project. The week notes will highlight the key things we’re working on, acknowledge achievements and show progress. They will also outline any blockers, and what we’re planning to work on next. 

Our first show and tell will be on Monday 20 January at 2.30pm in Southwark Council. We’ll make a recording available shortly afterwards.

Along with our show and tells, this is the main way you will find out about the project so please read on. Get in touch with Jyde at Southwark/Alex at DXW with any questions or feedback.

What are we thinking about?

This week we built the first iteration of a prototype and tested it with residents. The testing sessions give us incredibly valuable feedback for where to focus design on the next iteration. 

Because this project is for a common service pattern (rather than a transactional service for a single organisation), we’re thinking about what this service pattern should actually look like, and if it is a viable solution, how it could work for as many organisations as possible. You can read more about service patterns and see some examples. 

It’s essential that we understand and test what works for the local authorities and not just the residents. Our original plan was to concentrate our three sprints on three iterations of a prototype, tested with residents. We’re now looking at how to incorporate more co-design with council staff and contractors to validate the viability of the pattern.

What have we done in the last week?

• we analysed the outputs from our workshops in each of the four authorities
• the outputs from these workshops, the information we’ve learned from the discovery, and our knowledge of existing housing repairs services meant we could rapidly build an initial prototype for testing with residents
• on Thursday, we ran testing sessions with residents, using their feedback to gain insights into how to iterate and where to focus design efforts.

What are we planning to do next?

• we’ll be holding our first show and tell on Monday
• our second sprint starts on Tuesday, we’ll prioritise the items in our backlog and emerging ideas for the following two weeks.
• we’ll design and build a second iteration of the prototype for testing.
• we’ll design the framework for what our alpha common service pattern will look like
• technical discovery starts in the following week, so we’ll be making sure we’ve identified the right questions and council officers in advance

Who is on the dxw team?

• Daria Kwiatkowska (service designer)
• Debs Durojaiye (interaction designer)
• Vita Mangan (user researcher)
• Alex Yedigaroff (transformation manager)

Show n Tell 1 video

Page last updated: 11 March 2020