Sprint 14

Research goals from sprint 13

For this sprint, we decided to focus on publishing and displaying alerts within the web service, as this primarily met the statutory obligation for the service. We also wanted to explore whether or not this was sufficient to be classified as a minimum viable product (MVP).

This included:

what an alert service would look like without the user having to sign up?
how would an air quality alert be presented on a location forecast page?

Research findings

What worked well

In this round of research, we found:

alerts were positively received with all the participants seeing them as valuable and something they would consider signing up to
less engaged users follow key messages in the local area and on potential danger to health
more engaged users went deeper into the information we gave them into why we measure air pollution

What needs work

In this round of research, we found:

the alert banner at the top of the page could be confusing as it displays potentially conflicting information; for instance, showing a low forecast while the notification banner indicates a nearby threshold breach
the pollutant threshold table on the alert page led to disengaged and oblivious users not reading it

What we focused on in sprint 14

We decided to prototype an end-to-end sign-up process for alerts, focusing on key aspects:

is the sign-up process straightforward and not overly burdensome for users?
do users clearly understand the different types of alerts available for subscription?
how do users react to and interpret the various types of alerts they receive?

Alert service - meeting statutory obligations

Prototype scope

Air pollution topic landing page

In sprint 10, we started to look at the wider information architecture and how the service sits within GOV.UK. For the prototype, we decided to start the user journey from a topic landing page that contained links to:

Check local air quality
Air quality alerts
Sign up for air quality alerts
Why we monitor air pollution
Air pollutants we monitor
Health effects of poor air quality

This page does not contain an exhaustive list. In the future, it could link to other content, such as annual compliance data or services like ‘Get air quality data’.