District of North Vancouver
User-centered design of both the public-facing and staff sides of a service to make the government actions more transparent.
Role: UX Lead
Background
With a local election approaching, the mayor commissioned the Digital Services team to rapidly deliver a public-facing service that made council voting records transparent and accessible.
Alongside improving public transparency, the project also modernised the internal workflow, making it faster and easier for council staff to record and publish voting data.
Objectives
1
For the public
Enable residents to easily access council voting records online, removing the need to watch full council meetings.
2
For the Mayor & Council
Increase transparency and public trust ahead of the local election.
3
For the staff
Replace error-prone Excel spreadsheets, reduce vote entry time, and introduce digital sign-off workflows.
Approach
As the council's UX team of one, I followed a user-centred, mixed-methods approach, working closely with stakeholders and development teams throughout.
I conducted both formative and evaluative research, created low and high fidelity designs and collaborated with developers during the build process.
Activities
Stakeholder interviews
Gathered council goals, project requirements, and expectations to align the product vision.
Competitor review
Compared similar tools from other councils to understand common patterns, strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Focus groups
Ran focus groups with Clerks to understand their current workflows, challenges, and requirements.
Wireframes
Created low-fidelity wireframes to align with stakeholders and technical teams.
Prototypes
Designed high-fidelity interactive prototypes to demo for council and test with users.
User testing
Evaluated usability and workflows with Clerks to identify improvements before launch.
QA
Collaborated with developers to translate designs into a final product, including QA reivews.
Outcomes
3 months
From briefing to launch
For the first time, residents could easily search and view council voting records, while staff benefited from a greatly improved process for recording and publishing votes.
By involving stakeholders and developers throughout the entire process, implementation and adoption were seamless.