Blog

  • 10 principles that underpin user research at dxw

    At dxw, we believe in making decisions based on evidenced user needs. As researchers, we help multidisciplinary teams learn about users and recognise the value of user research. There is no single right way of doing this, but as a team, we need to be consistent in the way we approach, perform, and talk about…

  • A Summary of Scale Summit

    Recently I attended my first Scale Summit, which is mostly a day of Open Spaces where people discuss how to run things at scale without necessarily having to cover the basics. This is because most attendees will already be working at scale. All of the discussions are under Chatham House rules, so the Summit is…

  • Making user research count, a workshop to learn and share

    Learning how to plan effective user research Last week, I sat in on dxw’s very first “Making User Research Count” workshop to learn more about user-research and to get an insight into how other organisations want to improve it. Workshop Aims The aim of the workshop was to allow participants to identify the common mistakes…

  • Introducing Bob Walker

    Hi, I’m bob walker and I recently joined dxw from GDS. At GDS I was head of the Web Operations community where my main role was the pastoral care of the 20 or so civil servants within the community at GDS. As I would say to people “I don’t care when they take holiday, I…

  • Building a blogging platform for Essex County Council in 8 days

    Last month one of our delivery teams worked with the service design team at Essex County Council to build them a new blogging platform. In just one two-week sprint. Their first blog went live this week, so this seems like the perfect time for a celebration and a short story about the project. “We’re not…

  • Back to school for better Service Design

    The use of gameplay in user research and service design was a major theme I noticed emerging at the Service Design in Government Conference in Edinburgh last week: We told stories with Duplo in the #playinginthefaceofdeath game run by DWP. We learned how they have used this technique to explore do user research around the…