Make It Simple
Making online Norwegian welfare self-services simpler
Project name:
Project purpose:
Make it simple
To learn about the online self-services provided by the Norwegian welfare system and how to make them simpler.
People involved:
Context:
3 student designers, 3 participants/users
This project was part of a single module taken at the University of Oslo in the fall in 2020 - Experimental Participatory Design.
Experimental participatory design
“It is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve the people who are being served through design in the process to help ensure that the designed product/service meets their needs”
Sanders, 2008
Area of focus
The focus area for this project was the Norwegian Welfare System as a whole. The organisations selected were Helse Norge, NAV, UDI, and Skatteetaten. We started with an abroad approach as we did not want to limit ourselves and the participants to one particular organization or situation. We wanted to allow the participants to be the ones who would have a say about which path we should take.
Target group
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Immigrants
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2 women, 1 man
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High-educated
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Full-time workers
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Group selected under the COVID-19 circumstances
Design process technique
The technique selected for our project was the future workshop. This technique was selected due to its simplicity and efficiency in involving population in changing processes (Simonsen, J., & Robertson, T., 2013, p. 152). The future workshop technique allowed us to adapt and customise the design process so that everyone could both participate and contribute to the project. Through this technique the group of participants were able to develop new ideas or solutions of social problems.
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Future workshop structure​​
Source: Jungk & Muller, 1987. Future workshop structure according to experts.
As you can see in the picture above, future workshops are usually done in one or two sessions covering all phases. However, we decided to divide it into 4 workshops/4 days considering that approach was not feasible for us and the participants. The reasons:
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Workshop could have been mentally demanding as the participants were taking part of the workshops after work
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It could be difficult to run through digital platforms as it is not easy to keep everyone focus
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We could focus on individual situations and topics with more workshops.
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On the contrary, having several workshops we could take the risk of participants not remembering what was done in previous sessions and that could create loss of momentum.
Future workshop execution
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Preparation phase​​
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​​My role: Helped with planning and acted as note taker during introduction meeting
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Workshop purpose: To introduce the project and identify pain points in the Norwegian Welfare System as an immigrant​.
The first meeting with the participants was run online. In this session we wanted to provide an introduction to the project and learn from the participants what were their pain points in relation to the welfare system. In preparation for this meeting, we wanted to sensitise the participants and prepare them for the group discussion. Therefore, a questionnaire was created and sent a few days in advance prior to the meeting. What we wanted to achieve with the questionnaire was to understand how familiar they were with the welfare organizations and what type of information they were usually searching. The exercise of sending a questionnaire to the participants was considered part of a probe kit. However, as the participants are not currently involved in job seeker processes it was difficult to think about other possible reflective tools to be used as part of a probe kit.
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​​Key findings: ​​
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A participant met 2 different consultants and got 2 different answers about job seeker process
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The process after registering as a job seeker was confusing and time consuming for participants
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Not familiar with the pension system, participant only know money is taken from their salary for pension purposes
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Faced language barrier when using the online self-services
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Critique phase part 1​​
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​​My role: Helped with workshop planning and acted as co-facilitator during workshop
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Workshop purpose: How to converge and find our focus area
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Key findings: Registering as a job seeker and applying for a job in Norway were selected as focus areas
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​Challenge: Time management during workshop ​​
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Critique phase part 2
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​​My role: Helped with workshop planning and acted as facilitator during workshop
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Workshop purpose: To identify pain points/areas of improvements when applying for a job through Nav and registering as a job seeker in UDI
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Key findings: Applying for a job was more difficult or “painful” for users
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During this workshop, we performed a semi-physical observation exercise, where one of the designers was in a room with the participant and the rest were connected online. After the previous workshop, the participants wanted to look at job seeking more specifically and that was the focus area for this workshop. We made observations, discussed, learned and made choices together in this section. Based on the outcome of this workshop, we wanted to look further at NAV's services.
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Fantasy and realisation phase
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​My role: Workshop facilitator
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Workshop purpose: To include participants in the decision making of how their ideal solution would look like (sketching ideas) and planning further
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Key findings: Participants found sketching a useful exercise to put together ideas and share them in a more tangible way​​
Prototype
​Going into the prototyping phase some decisions had to be made regarding how much the participants were going to be involved in the prototyping process. We were a bit unsure how to proceed from this point so we decided to ask for some input during the mid term presentation. We got some suggestions that we could perhaps have a heavy involvement of the users by having a “live” prototyping session where we would create and adjust the prototypes together with the participants in person, or we could have a different type of approach and have us create the prototype separate from the participants and have them give us feedback later on.
Both approached were discussed the participants and together it was decided to go for the second approach - prepare prototype in advance and share it with them for feedback.​
Reflections
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Challenges:
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Covid-19 (target group)
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Participants and designers were full-time workers meaning their/our availability was rather limited or fixed
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Workshops had to be planned after working hours (cognitively demanding)
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Having multiple workshops created loss of momentum and participants were not able to remember what was discussed previously
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Lessons learned:
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Agree on design guidelines before starting with prototypes
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Reflect on the target group and how they can influence the outcome of the project
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Test links multiple times before sharing them
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Bring more clarity on the project plan and expectations from the users from day one to avoid lack of availability and misunderstandings
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Capture how website was improved (before and after)
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