Day: 22 June 2017

This is a great example of what might be called macro user research, investing in understanding people’s own framing of and understanding of their situation and reflecting on how government service design should respond to that. Three broad themes emerge, the first of which is ‘conversational services’. Conversation is a powerful concept, and one all too easily overlooked in the design of high volume services. And it is the starting point for the Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the defining texts of the web, made of up of 95 theses, of which the first three are:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice

And of course ‘markets’ don’t have to be limited to markets.

Pia Waugh – New Zealand Government Web Toolkit