Getting ready for usability testing the prototype
- Author Benjy Stanton
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In work, it felt like the team was really working well together by the end of this week. A lot of stuff has happened recently (onboarding at different times, people leaving and joining, holidays, Christmas) so we've struggled to really get a good rhythm going, until now.
We have 3 user research trips on the horizon, which will include visiting 3 to 5 different locations around the UK. The first is next week, and I'm looking forward to getting things in front of users for the first time.
We did a prototype show and tell to some stakeholders and I feel it went well. I was prepping myself for difficult questions, but generally it seemed people were excited to see some abstract requirements brought to life. I think people are starting to take notice of what we are doing, and we are getting our name out there with more teams.
It reminded me that often, creating a prototype and trying to take it out for usability testing, can also spark the wider team into thinking more about things like policy, comms, training, reference data… or at least how all these things will need to fit together.
I get the impression that maybe we are pushing to show things to users before the wider program is really ready, but I think it's better to face some of those issues now, rather wait until later when it'll be harder and the stakes will be higher. Hopefully this way, we can iterate on the comms, training etc as we go.
Met Office app accessibility audit
Elsewhere, I was really pleased to read this blog post: Accessibility audit of the Met Office app: outcomes and learnings by Andrew Hick, Eu-Hyung Han and Sophie Yeomans-Smith,.
I wasn't involved in this work, but I did previously work on the Met Office app with Sophie and the team from Calvium, whilst I was at Made Tech. It was a great team, that really took accessibility seriously. Hats off to everyone involved for delivering such a positive outcome. I'm sure it must have been stressful at times.