I started with the Council as an apprentice in 2001 and have always worked within a customer service role, I have seen customer services change and evolve over the years. I have always loved providing a good customer experience. I started a new journey as a service designer and it became apparent that users needed to be involved in the design process instead of us trying to guess what customers needed to carry out a successful transaction with the council. I quickly realised that I had a genuine passion for improving a customer experience, I understood that users need to be at the forefront of our designs and I changed my journey once again and gained the position of the User Researcher for BwD.

We now talk to our users and find out what their user needs to be able to complete their journey. Our aim to find out the journey our customers are taking and what their end goal. And also what works for them along the way and what doesn’t.

Before carrying out the user research, I have to decide on a method to use. There is a wide range to choose from, so I have to assess the situation and see which one will be best suited.

Some examples of methods I use are:

I will work with the designers, suppliers, and the business presenting back what we have found and we will redesign the product to meet user needs. It’s simple, if people don’t understand what to do, then they won’t use the service and will then probably contact us via phone.

A user researcher is the bridge that connects customer needs to the work we produce, and I hope my position supports customers and makes them feel heard.

I have learnt that working in an agile team we all bring different skills to the table and using these different skills helps us to succeed with our work. I have seen the team grow and learnt about the systems we use and the capabilities of our low code customer platform as well as GDS standards and service design and this helps me when carrying out research with users.

My aspirations are to change approaches and have users at the centre of all services and designs, to grow our customer panel and ensure that we are talking to the right people allowing users to access services successfully and increase our digital transactions.