Every day’s a learning day!

James Freed, our Deputy Director of the NHS Digital Academy shares his reflections on learning together through User-Centred Design.

When my daughter was seven, she came home from school one day and said "Daddy, when I get things wrong, my brain grows". It was a sweet observation about learning more from our failures than our successes, an observation very much backed up by evidence.

Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s always obvious that we’re failing, and you can only learn from failure if you recognise, and accept, that you’ve failed.

I had an experience a couple of weeks ago that reinforced my belief that the mindset of seeking out evidence of failure (or perhaps it’s safer to say 'sub-optimal outcome') is one of the most important things to drive effective improvement.

The whole NHS Digital Academy team went on a two-day, team-based, User-Centred Design training programme.

The programme was a blast, and full of insights from beginning to end, but it was the act of undertaking that learning together where we experienced the most value.

Our shared journey helped us understand our different perspectives as well helping each other along the way. I wanted to share two key points from my experience.

Love the problem

Kat and Laura introduced us to the phrase 'you’ve got to love the problem'.

It seems that a deeply entrenched human condition is that we are geared up to solve problems fast.

Our brains are wired to understand the world around us and we make decisions based on lightning fast predictions our brains make based on what we can perceive.

In the digital transformation world we see this all the time.

People buying software that 'absolutely will' increase productivity, make people’s lives better, save lives or improve uptake.

That different people have different experiences, different perspectives and come to different conclusions doesn’t matter.

We summarise this behaviour as 'solutionising' and there is plenty of evidence about how jumping to the wrong conclusions without the requisite evidence results in failure and waste.

The Government Digital Service claims to have saved central government £1.7 billion in 2014-15 by introducing training, policy and process to encourage departments to avoid this solutionising behaviour.

That approach, our natural approach, leads us to 'love the solution'.

And if we love the solution, our baby, we’ll do anything to defend it.

But what if we’re wrong? Or what if things change?

If we can somehow get into a mindset where we are so curious that nothing is ever enough for us, that we keep on asking the question 'how can we do better?' keep on measuring success and gathering data, surely that will lead to a better outcome?

That’s what I took from the phrase 'love the problem'. And I have to say, I love that phrase!

User Journey mapping is NOT Process Mapping

The other epiphany I had is a more embarrassing one to admit to.

I’ve been working in digital skills development now for 10 years.

I think that there is substantial evidence to say that the skillset we need to invest in most is that of user-centred design and user research.

Far too few of our decisions are made with data from our users and I felt I had a good understanding of the principles and practices of UCD.

So, it came as something of a shock when I realised I didn’t know as much about it as I thought.

Kat and Laura talked us through user journey maps and we had a bash at mapping out the user journey for a typical learner coming to us at the Academy.

I confess, I’d never really appreciated the difference between a user journey map and a process map.

However, as we explored the user journey more (including mapping a hypothetical journey starting significantly before our learners even hear about the Digital Academy) it dawned on me that a user journey map is so much more than a process map.

That change of perspective really helped to determine that we have a role in helping learners understand and clarify their learning needs way before they think of applying for or enrolling in one of our courses.

It also helped us as a team highlight literally hundreds of things we didn’t know about our users that we captured as questions on our map.

It’ll inform how we undertake our future research and discovery activities.

This map is something the whole team are really enthused to continue to contribute to and we expect that it will help us provide better services for you as time progresses.

If you, or your team are interested in finding out more about user research or our user-centred design awareness training offers, please contact us.