We are currently in a period in which there has been a dramatic increase in the number of devices that websites are viewed on. Smartphone penetration continues to increase with more people predicted to access the internet via this method than PCs by 2013. At the same time we’ve witnessed huge growth in tablets, like the iPad and Kindle, presenting yet another range of screen sizes and capabilities for websites to deal with.

What is Responsive Design?
A design that can adapt to the constraints of the browser window or device that renders it, creating a design that almost responds to the user’s needs.
Ethan Marcotte

User interaction methods are also expanding meaning it’s no longer just about the pointer and keyboard. Touch, console controller, stylus and even voice are becoming increasingly important to consider.

The spectrum of screen sizes and resolutions is changing every day, and creating a different version of DirectScot that targets each individual device was deemed to be impractical. The challenge in developing the user experience for DirectScot, with responsive design in mind, was to ensure the best possible experience for the widest audience while future proofing it, as far as is achievable, for the changes in the digital landscape yet to come.

The time is right
Responsive design should help ensure that DirectScot is accessible and well presented to the widest audience, regardless of where and on what device they are accessing it from. As new and as yet unforeseen devices continue to enter the market, responsive design should help to ensure that DirectScot is future friendly.

Tell us what you think. You can comment on this blog by leaving feedback here. Please also contribute your views as part of the consultation on DirectScot.

The DirectScot Team

The prototype produces lots of great search results, in fact we’re surprised at just how good some of the automatically generated links between related services are. However there are lots of things that just don’t work. Ironically, it’s often the fact that they don’t work that strengthens the case for DirectScot.

e.g. Student Finance

Searching for ‘student  finance’ in the prototype returns results from the the UK national website DirectGov, but these results aren’t relevant in Scotland as the they only cover students from England.

This happens a lot in Directgov. Despite the best efforts of the UK Directgov team, very often when services differ between England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, it’s the English service that tends to get the higher billing.

The approach we have taken in the prototype is to automatically syndicate all content from DirectGov. Every article is marked as ‘unreviewed’, meaning that is has not yet been approved or rejected for inclusion in DirectScot. Once reviewed, rejected articles will be removed from DirectScot leaving only those relevant to Scottish users.

In the prototype we have reviewed and approved the entire ‘motoring’ topic from DirectGov but there’s a lot to do to complete a full review of all content. The aim of a full DirectScot portal would be to ensure that Scottish users get the content that’s most relevant to them and to address the anomalies highlighted in this blog.

Tell us what you think. You can comment on this blog by leaving feedback here. Please also contribute your views as part of the consultation on DirectScot.

The DirectScot Team

The prototype blends information, services and campaign material from across government, at a national level from Directgov and Scotland.gov.uk and from four of Scotland’s 32 local authorities: Edinburgh City, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire and East Lothian. Using automatic location detection it then tailors the results of searches to your local authority area. To assist in showing you the breadth and depth of the services available through DirectScot, we have put together a range of fully-functioning user journeys.

Before that, a quick word of thanks to each of the local authorities for agreeing to be part of the prototype. The quality and structure of their websites helped greatly in trying to make sense of the vast amount of information in the DirectScot prototype. Special thanks to the teams at South Lanarkshire and Edinburgh City who provided an excellent critique as the prototype took shape and invaluable data on popular local services.

DirectScot is all about the citizen. We have purposefully resisted the temptation to point to everything (official publications on government policy, minutes of meetings, speeches from Ministers) in favour of focusing on the services and tasks that matter most to real people. Each task in the prototype comes with an additional ’help bar’ to give users as much information as possible about the next steps.

The prototype has several user journeys that we feel show off it off at its best. Here’s a brief explanation of the journeys and why we think they work. Try them out for yourself.

The Blue Badge Scheme
On Jan 1, 2012 a new disabled parking scheme (blue badge) came into operation. This is the first application delivered under the banner of DirectScot. Without DirectScot, the alternatives would have been to create yet another purpose-built government website or to have shoehorned ‘blue badge’ content uncomfortably into the Transport Scotland corporate website.

Booking a practical driving test
This journey is included as part of the prototype to illustrate DirectScot’s links with the services that are reserved to the UK Government such as passports, tax and benefits and motoring issues like vehicle tax and licences. The prototype uses the API (application programming interface) built by the UK Government’s Directgov website to syndicate nearly 2,000 articles into DirectScot. Future APIs could be used for other transactional services.

Council tax
Often the number one searched for service on local authority websites, the ‘council tax’ user journey is provided as a pure set of search results in DirectScot, to show the capability of the search and discovery model we have developed. The DirectScot search engine prioritises tasks and classifies them with the ‘do it online’ label. The intention behind this approach is to help users achieve their goal as quickly as possible.

Bank Holidays
Traffic stats from the Scottish Government’s corporate website, scotland.gov.uk, show that information on Scottish bank holidays is very popular. In a search for ‘bank holidays’, DirectScot aims to enhance the user’s experience by automatically displaying related information like school term dates and information on child benefit payments during bank holidays as well as related services like holiday pay calculators.

Find jobs in Scotland
Finding information on jobs in the Scottish public sector is harder than you might imagine. Right now in Scotland, job adverts are dispersed across a range of different websites including MyJobScotland, NHSScotlandJobs and WorkForScotland. The prototype’s first aim is to help the user by bringing these sources together in one place. Longer term, through greater collaboration between public sector providers, we hope to make all jobs searchable via DirectScot.

Advice on Legal Aid
The Scottish Government has recently accepted recommendations from the Civil Justice Advisory Group calling for improvements to the online information available to citizens covering their rights and access to justice. The DirectScot prototype has taken up this challenge and established the ‘your rights and responsibilities’ topic. The prototype launches with the ‘legal aid’ topic but this will continue to develop into the full topic with new material being added throughout the consultation period to March 2012.

Tell us what you think. You can comment on this blog by leaving feedback here. Please also contribute your views as part of the consultation on DirectScot.

The DirectScot Team

The rationale for DirectScot is straightforward:

Simplifying the experience of government
We want to make it easier to find the right information from government and think that the current online landscape is both cluttered and confusing.  To give you some sense of this, in its first ten years since devolution the SG has built up a large portfolio of websites delivering government information. Each site presents the user with a different look and feel. DirectScot aims to facilitate greater consistency in user-experience. Put simply: understand one government site, understand them all.

Putting users first
People come to government websites for many reasons but all have the same desire – to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible and then leave. We want to remove the barriers to this and believe that there should be greater emphasis on completing the task rather than insisting users wade through every word of the ‘small print’ first. In DirectScot, all the information you need is still available, but it is the task that takes priority.

Seeing the wood and the trees
It’s sometimes hard to find out exactly what you’re entitled to and to have confidence in the information you’re reading online. We want to provide citizens and business in Scotland with a comprehensive and authoritative view of all government services available to them at a national and local level and DirectScot aims to be that trusted portal.

Giving you a voice
We believe that user-engagement is a fundamental part of delivering better services and want to make it easier for you to have your say. It is the feedback from the community of users that holds the key to improving the delivery of public services. DirectScot aims to be a lead vehicle for this by enabling greater dialogue and listening to the wisdom of the crowd.

Reducing cost
DirectScot aims to make significant inroads into the cost of delivering government information online by reducing the duplication inherent in multiple technology platforms and by limiting associated costs such as hosting, design and branding. It also aims to do this by stripping back and re-homing the content from large numbers of centrally run SG sites within a single portal.

Establishing a platform to build on
We view DirectScot as a starting point not an end in itself. The future of online services will be shaped by users and by public sector organisations working in partnership. As part of DirectScot, we aim to build a suite of common applications for general use by government organisations and to assist in the development of shared online services. DirectScot also aims to facilitate the development of innovative products by publishing a wide range of government datasets.

Tell us what you think. You can comment on this blog by leaving feedback here. Please also contribute to the consultation on DirectScot.

The DirectScot Team

DirectScot is a prototype for a Scottish public services portal. Its aim is to provide people and businesses with a simpler view of all services available to them.

The citizen (i.e. you) is the customer and since the customer is always right, the consultation begins here. What you tell us will shape how DirectScot approaches the future so don’t be shy about making your views known.

The aim of DirectScot is to enable you to find what you are looking for as quickly and easily as possible, based on aggregation of content and powerful, location-based search technology.

It is a simple idea but a complex one in practice. So there is a great deal to discuss and we will be blogging throughout January and February on issues such as the rationale for DirectScot , its technology, and what the next steps might be. Through the blog we also aim to respond to as many of your questions as possible.

The formal consultation on DirectScot also begins today and In the next post we’ll set out the rationale for DirectScot. Once you’ve had time to view the prototype and read some of the blogs, have your say by submitting a consultation response. Tell us what you think. You can comment on this blog by leaving feedback here.

The DirectScot Team