After Discovery UX Assessment

What is an After Discovery UX Assessment?

The purpose of After Discovery UX Assessment is to:

• ensure you've completed the work required to progress to Alpha; and
• the work you've done is aligned with meeting the Digital Service Standards.

Does my digital service need to be assessed?

Every project to design and deliver digital services is different. Check with your eServices project lead to find out if your digital service will undergo this assessment. You can also look in the SharePoint project folder to see if this assessment is part of your project bundle. 

How to tell when your digital service is ready for this assessment

A digital service is ready for this assessment when the following are documented and complete.

• Discovery Service Compliance Check.
• Clearly defined problem statement (what problem does this service solve – why should it exist?).
• Demonstrated a deep understanding of your user groups, their diversity and their associated user needs.
• Documented processes, policies and legislation that may pose barriers to designing and delivering a modern, user-centric service.
• Prioritized list of what will be prototyped and tested in Alpha. 

How to schedule an After Discovery UX Assessment

You can take one of the following approaches to schedule your assessment.

1. When you are planning out your project or creating your project timeline. We can get these assessments in the calendar. You can reassess your service's rediness for the assessment closer to the session date and we can move it if needed.
2. Once you're able to demonstrate the digital service is at the state of readiness indicated in the section above. In these cases it can take up to 2 weeks to find a time that works for all meeting participants. 

Let the eServices project lead know which approach you plan to take and who to invite to the session. They will work with the User Experience Manager to get the session scheduled.

Who should attend a UX assessment session?

Required for assessment meeting: Department service owners (subject matter experts, director responsible for the service)

Optional for assessment meeting:

• people from your team to answer questions about your service;
• an employee who interacts with the public on a regular basis;
• the manager of your existing offline service; and
• a functional analyst.

How to prepare for an After Discovery UX Assessment

Look at the scoring criteria we use for this assessment. This is a document in the project SharePoint folder. It lays out exactly what we're looking for so you can work toward it.

What happens during an After Discovery UX Assessment session?

The eServices User Experience Manager will facilitate a call or in-person session with the project team. They will lead the team through a series of questions and document the status.

A good way to think about these sessions is they are an opportunity to talk about all the work you've done to get to where you are. They are also a good time to talk about options for meeting certain criteria.

These sessions are scheduled for 1 hour.

What happens after the assessment session?

The User Experience Manager will review their notes and any UX artifacts the team has shared to demonstrate compliance.

They will complete the assessment report and share it with the eServices project lead for their review. 

The aServices project lead will let the department's Project Manager know when the report is available and they will share it with the project team. 

Interpreting the UX assessment report

The UX assessment report is an Excel spreadsheet. It lays out all of the criteria and provides a score in the Status column. Depending on your response, each criteria will be assigned with the following.

Approved

When we assign an Approved status is means you've completed the work required and you're on track to carry on.

Course-correct

Items we assign a Course-correct status to indicate:

• you've started the work, but it's not complete;
• you have a plan to complete the work, but have not executed the plan; or
• the work you completed was not what we were looking for.

Not approved

We rarely assign this status, but in some cases teams miss important requirements that pose a risk to the service launching. In these instances it's important we stop for a moment to develop a plan to meet the requirement so work can proceed. 

Following up with eServices to document plan to meet the criteria

The department's Project Manager is responsible for following up with eServices to communicate the team's plan to meet the criteria. They will work with the sService project lead to complete this column in the report. They may also request a call with the User Experience Manager to discuss options for compliance. 

What happens after you pass a UX Assessment?

• Once you pass the After Discovery UX Assessment you can proceed to Alpha.
• Once you pass the After Alpha UX Assessment you can proceed to Beta.
• Once you pass the After Discovery/Alpha Combined UX Assessment you can proceed to Beta.
• Once you pass the After Beta UX Assessment you'll work with the eServices project lead to complete final compliance checks before you launch the digital service to the public.

What happens if you don't pass a UX Assessment?

eServices makes every effort work with project teams to find solutions so they pass UX assessments. There are instances where a digital service might not pass an assessment.

• If the department's Project Manager doesn't present the team's plan to meet criteria assigned a status of "Course-correct" or "Not approved" the eServices project lead will follow up with the project team, but if they don't get a response, we cannot pass the assessment. 
• If too much time has gone by since the previous assessment and work has continued. 

In these instances eServices may determine the digital service needs a partial or full re-assessment before the service can launch.