UX research & design

Yarra Valley Water
Land development application portal

Research summary

Research summary
Research into people’s experience of land development and the easyACCESS portal was completed. 54 people participated in the study, which was a mixed quantitative/qualitative approach including survey, semi-structured interviews and desktop review. The findings inform re-design of the land development service experience and easyACCESS portal. The report concludes with nine new service design concepts for improving the end-to-end land development journey and the role of easyACCESS in this.

Primary research question
How do people experience land development and what is the role of easyACCESS in that?

Secondary research questions
1. What are peoples' motivations, attitudes and behaviour in relation to the development process?
2. What are people's pain points and areas of concern during the development process?
3. What service re-designs will relieve the pain points of land development and improve user experience?

User archetypes
The user types that experience land development:
Dreamers, Thinkers, Doers.
These archetypes emerged based on their role in the land development process, their driving attitudes, motivations, behaviours and what matters most to them.

A 50 page report of findings was created which went into great detail about the lived experiences people have with the land development process. Some of the main themes included:
• Persistent unpredictability
• No common pool of knowledge

Recommendations to address these:
• Create a single source of truth resource about the land development process
• Educate about various scenarios in the land development process
• Create an interactive map that provides centralised data for all properties
• Find ways to increase empathy between actors
• Develop a project template suitable for all actors

Reliance on familiar cohorts
Recommendations to address this:
• Become the first source of information for everything land development
• Leverage other entities in land development eco-system for distributing information about the process, e.g. Bunnings, Reece Plumbing, Councils

General disillusion with authorities
Recommendations to address this:
• Create a transparent process so users aren't left in the dark

The final report was circulated to stakeholders within the business and used to re-imagine the land development process at Yarra Valley Water

Service design

Re-imagining how land development could work based off the research was the next step. Working closely with the service designers, they developed multiple options that could be rolled out. I looked it from an online perspective and those particular touchpoints (giving customers the right tools to feel confident in completing an application correctly) and the service designers looked further than that, exploring relationships with external entities such as councils and how we could fill the knowledge gap so many customers have when it comes to land development.

Further down the track after a design path had been chosen, multiple workshops were held with the core team to gather all the requirements. Further workshops were held with stakeholders to gather any insights we may have missed. This included Customer Care who work through applications with customers over the phone and are very familiar with their pain points first hand. System architects to assess from a technical perspective. We made sure all the way through that we were research (customer) and design lead, not tailoring our designs to what our current systems and processes were capable of.

Service blueprints were developed as we worked through these workshops. Due to the complex nature of land development, Service Blueprints were often sliced due to the amount of detail captured.

UX design

From the Service Blueprints, user flows were created in Miro to map out interactions points. From there mid fidelity wireframes were created. So far over 50 screens been put into an interactive prototype to map out all the possible scenarios. These were tested in workshops with multiple stakeholders who understand the land development processes and have a good understanding of where customers go wrong. They also make sure we capture all the right information from customers so their application can be processed.

Common components are being created throughout this process. This creates consistency for the customer and will decrease development time. Content has also been written in a language that makes sense to the customer.

Testing with participants is next. We are looking at a diverse range of people that fit with our archetypes, Dreamers, Thinkers and Doers. Also, people who have recently completed an application and people who have minimal knowledge of land development and have never put in an application.

There are many stages to the land development portal. So far we have completed the Development intent for residential and Single sewer application. Applying the Design Language System to these designs is also in progress.