Access Canberra - Research + artefacts

Jenny Bock User research, service design, transactions
Sticky notes on a wall during a research synthesis session - Access Canberra project
Client

Access Canberra, ACT Government

My role

Service designer / UX researcher

Deliverables

Research findings, journey maps, blueprint, form patterns

Context

Licensing, permits and payments

Overview

Access Canberra is the front door to hundreds of ACT Government transactions, from driver licences and working-with-vulnerable-people cards to business permits and fines. Many of those transactions still ended in a PDF, a phone call or a visit to a service centre.

I was engaged to research the highest-volume transactions and produce the artefacts that would guide their move to fully online, mobile-friendly services.

The challenge

  • Each transaction was owned by a different regulator with its own legislation, forms and language.
  • Customers were bounced between the website, the contact centre and the shopfront to finish a single task.
  • Forms asked for information the government already held.
  • Staff in service centres had built their own cheat sheets to explain the process to customers.

Research

Transaction analysis

Ranked transactions by volume, completion rate and contact centre demand to pick the first five to study.

Shopfront intercepts

Short interviews with customers at service centres, right after they had tried to complete a task.

Contact centre listening

Reviewed call recordings and categorised why people were calling instead of finishing online.

Staff co-design

Worked with front-line staff to turn their cheat sheets into candidate service improvements.

Artefacts

Current-state journeys

Five transaction journeys showing every channel switch, wait and piece of re-entered information.

Service blueprint

The systems, teams and legislation behind each step, so the digital team could see what really had to change.

Form patterns

A set of reusable question patterns (identity, address, eligibility, payment) aligned with the ACT digital standards.

Future-state vision

A target journey for each transaction, with the "tell us once" principle applied throughout.

"I filled in the form online, printed it, drove here, and the lady typed it back into her computer. Why did I bother?"

Customer, service centre intercept

Outcome

5high-volume transactions mapped end to end
60+customers and staff involved
1shared form pattern library

The journeys and blueprint were adopted by the digital transformation program as the baseline for redesigning each transaction. The form patterns were built into the government's online forms platform, so improvements made for one licence flowed through to the rest.