Housing Repairs

Weeknotes - 7 February 2020

We’re working on an alpha project with 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. 

You can view a recording of our second show and tell here and see the slides. Our next show and tell will be on Monday 17 February at 2.30pm in Grantham. A recordingof the show and tell will be  available shortly afterwards.

Along with our show and tells, these weeknotes are the main way you can find out about the project so please read on. Get in touch with Alexat DXW/Jyde at Southwark with any questions or feedback.

What are we thinking about?

We’re now well into our third and final sprint, so we’re working on bringing together the final project outputs while continuing to design, test and iterate, while thinking about what shape the next stage of this work could take.

This project is an alpha of a ‘common service pattern’ rather than the transactional service itself. A service pattern can be described as best practice for providing services that meet user needs. We are using prototyping to test ideas and concepts that will inform the pattern. 

In the next phase beta - you take your best idea from alpha and start building it for real. It also involves thinking about how your service will integrate with (or start to replace) existing services, and preparing for the transition to live. We’re thinking about the best way to shape a project to deliver a working service, while continuing to contribute to a common pattern for the benefit of all local authorities.

What have we done in the last week?

• we held our second show and tell at Lincoln council, demonstrating the work that had been carried out in the second sprint
• we iterated the prototype, changing parts of it based on what we’ve learnt and adding to the journey. For example the prototype now includes the booking of an appointment for a repair
• two design critique sessions were held with internal users from each of the four councils. We’ll be using the feedback and ideas from those sessions to iterate the prototype further, ready for testing with residents
• the technical discovery phase completed, with a model sequence diagram and data view to accompany the service pattern

What are we planning to do next?

• we’ll be testing the latest version of the prototype with residents on Tuesday
• we’re also talking to Adur and Worthing council to understand how they approached the end to end design of their housing repairs service and to see what can be learnt for the common pattern
• we’ll be bringing together the final project outputs - a business case, a recommendation report and a user research report

Who is on the dxw team?

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

Page last updated: 11 March 2020