These digital design principles are for use by anyone developing any sort of digital system for the States of Jersey. The principles help reduce cost and reduce requirements on resources. The digital design principles provide guidance on how to provide an excellent digital service.
Remember it starts with the user needs
In design and delivery, focus on user needs and understand what is required from a digital service. The voice of the customer should influence design at every stage.
Address the whole experience, from start to finish and in context
Coordinate services and processes across all teams, including teams that are not part of the States of Jersey, involved in the process to deliver joined up services for our customers. Consider all steps in the process - even those invisible to the customer still affect their experience. Design of the user experience needs to take into account where and how the service will be used, not just ideal situations.
Build simple services customers choose to use
Apply continuous improvement principles to services to simplify them, and then build a simple and intuitive online process. Customers should feel like they are interacting with the States of Jersey regardless of which service and channel they choose, so use standard design patterns and style guides.
Iterate then iterate again
Build the service incrementally, releasing improvements early and often. Once live, make sure the service can be iterated and improved in response to customer and business needs, ensuring the service owner has sufficient capacity, capability, resources and technical flexibility to do so.
Make it safe
Build security and data privacy considerations into every stage of design. Identify the information the service will use or create, how its use is transparent to the user, and the consequences of its improper use. Consider threats and vulnerabilities through people, processes and technology and put appropriate legal, regulatory and policy frameworks in place to manage risk and to complement the technical security controls we deploy.
Design with data and keep measuring
Measure how well the service is working for our customers before, during and after improvement. Include measurement on how well a system performs and how customers are interacting with it in real-time. Carefully monitor and analyse these metrics to find issues and bug and prioritise improvements based on customer and staff feedback. Build a feedback mechanism enabling customers to report issues directly.
Reuse common platforms
Evaluate the tools and systems we use to build, host, operate and measure the service, and how we procure them. Reuse existing technologies and common components. Make use of technologies that provide scope to develop and scale easily and that are cost effective.
Test the full service from end to end
Test the full service not just the website. Test the service with appropriate ministers, chief officers, service managers and customers. Make appropriate use of automated testing of the technology within an iterative release cycle to improve efficiency through consistent, repeatable testing and regression testing.
Use open standards
Use open standards and common government platforms to improve interoperability and reduce the risk of vendor lock in. Choose standards that support flexibility and change and be fair and transparent in the specification and implementation of open standards.
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