Overview
Mobile Service Centres assist regional and disaster-affected townships. Accurate information needed to be easily accessed.
Service NSW is a New South Wales Government agency within the Department of Customer Service that provides one-stop access to government services and other partner agencies via online, phone or in-person at its service centres.
As a result of the 2019-2020 bushfires, residents from affected areas had difficulty accessing service centres either because their roads had closures, their nearest service centre was too far away or a combination of both.
Due to this, Service NSW came up with a fast solution by creating Mobile Service Centres. Mobile Service Centres travel from town to town in regional areas on a daily basis, even during times of being disaster-free.
Problem statement
There were quite a few learnings from the fast launch of the mobile service centres. One of the main issues was that residents weren’t aware of when mobile service centres were going to arrive at their township and we needed to improve that awareness and access to information through our website product.
Both staff and customers actually have a similar goal of finding a practical location given the constraints of time and location. They only have a difference in who they are finding it for.
The solution should not only pertain to the current bus routes but must be scalable for future needs (increased/decreased bus routes). Secondly, the users must be able to distinguish the differences between service centres and mobile service centres to understand the temporary nature of the dates and times.
Users & audience
The Service NSW website is the main reference point for our customers and Service NSW staff, so I had to ensure that we met the needs of both user groups.
Roles & responsibilities
The website product team at Service NSW is relatively large with a small number of Product Designers, Two Senior Product Designers and one Principal Product Designer. Due to the content management demand, our team was largely content designers. Each designer focused on their initiative priority – Joining Service NSW after the bushfire, my first initiative was to focus on Mobile Service Centres on Locate Us.
As the sole product designer working on this initiative, I started with a comparative analysis, followed by ideation, staff surveys, design, prototyping, remote staff usability testing and customer usability testing.
Throughout this project, I paired with our externally sourced front-end developer and content designer.
This initiative was in part remote and in-person due to the nature of lockdowns, however, was able to conduct interviews in person during low COVID-19 transmission numbers.
Processes
The research included interviews with staff and customers as it was essential to delivering a proven solution at Service NSW.
Staff surveys
Frontline staff are confronted with customers who are going through mixed emotions during a time of disaster and it’s key to hear their feedback based on their experience to channel through what customers had to say during these times.
I created an 8-question survey that was distributed to our support service specialists, call centre staff and customer service representatives. The survey was disrupted through the respective Facebook Workplace group and email.
The goal was to gain valuable insights on how to better service the needs of customers and staff about mobile service centres.
In the end, the survey received 80 responses over 5 days.
I conducted a remote workshop to synthesise the responses via Miro.
Synthesis
Key takeaways:
We have to bring awareness of Mobile Service Centres to the people in these communities and make it as easy as possible to digest and act upon.
There are mandatory requirements and materials that customers need with them to complete transactions and services. These details are at the bottom of the page and can be easily missed
Instead of focusing on the bus as a travelling route, we can focus on knowing the schedule of a bus as it pertains to a particular location.
We need to keep the context of all locations available to the customer while searching for a Mobile Service Centre so customers can easily make judgement calls about suitability for a visit.
Over half of the participants find it easy, or very easy, to use the website to find and make decisions on Mobile Service Centre visits.
Comparison analysis
I compared how other mobile-based services display their locations and what services they provide and if there were anything of value we could adopt for usability testing.
Current and future bus locations
Calendar and information for temporary locations
Ability to book an appointment
Filters and search functionality
Progressive disclosure of locations by proximity groupings
Filters
Browse by state
Get directions link
Show distance from current location
Staff usability testing
With the prototype designed and ready to be tested, I scheduled x5 30-minute interviews with support service specialists from Newcastle and Parramatta contact centre staff. All Service NSW staff refer to the website as their main source of truth and needed to be tested with them as they assist customers through the website.
Key takeaways:
Customer usability testing
Mittagong Service Centre was the next best choice for customer usability testing due to a mobile service centre being out of reach at the time. Mittagong was selected due to being surrounded by the bushfires as well as having affected residents relocated to the area at the time. We had hoped to interact with those who at least had mutual connections to those affected and had minimal awareness.
Key takeaways:
All the customers that we interviewed were not aware of our mobile service centres
They liked the concept of our mobile service centres once informed
There’s a clear indication that our customers aren’t informed about our Mobile Service Centres due to a lack of awareness
All of the customers didn’t know what the icons on the map meant until noticing the legend at the bottom of the map
2 of the 4 participants didn’t scroll to see the legend and struggled to understand
Once directed to scroll it became clear to them, however, the overall feedback was to increase the prominence through the size and colour of the icons used
The good thing is, that once customers were able to identify the blue dot as a future stop, they approved the idea of having future stops displayed on the map
Customers were also able to identify the next stop after Bundanoon without any dotted route between stops
Additional feedback is that the icons needed to be clearer, larger or a different colour
Customers weren’t also clear about being able to interact with the future stop (dot) to get more information from the map
Another piece of feedback is that customers would like to see the distance between their current location to the Mobile Service Centre
It’s worth mentioning that all the customers interviewed go directly to the website to get the information they need about Service Centres
With that being said, they didn’t see a need for the need to opt-in to SMS notifications for themselves, but they did see its use for other customers, mainly in areas that are more dependable on Mobile Service Centres and to notify their friends and family members
A majority have a preference to opt-in to SMS over email but we believe there’s no harm in offering a variety 3 of the 4 participants didn’t notice the opt-in on the campaign page, so this will need to be tweaked
Outcomes
Find a location page
Improved filter visual design: The filter design has been grouped under ‘Filter by centre type’ with individual buttons. Individualised filter buttons is more responsive and friendly, especially due to our character count on filters, as well as potential additional filter options in the near future. This will be looked into further as a part of CI.
Improved map icons: The icons have been redesigned to be clearer and larger based on the feedback during customer and staff testing.
Map legend positioning: During testing, we found that customers were struggling to understand the icons on the map as they sat below the map, not viewable without scrolling.
Mobile service centre landing page
Upcoming location icon: A new icon has been included in the legend to identify future stops for the mobile service centre.
Date overlay: Customers recommended increasing the weight of the dates on the map as legibility was an issue.
Dynamic map legend: The icons in the legend change based on which filter is active.
Chronological order of buses: When the Mobile Service Centre filter is active, the left-hand content displays the buses in a monthly chronological order.
Results
The learnings from staff and customer usability testing can now be seen in action at the Service NSW Find a Location page and the Mobile Service Centre landing page.