Understanding our User-centred Principles Our Department’s user-centred principles represent the values, habits and behaviours we will all work towards as we begin to build new ways of working and thinking to deliver better outcomes for our community. Understanding our user-centred principles Principle Context For me this Understand the people we serve We know who our users are and talk to them to understand their perspective to build our knowledge base. We use the evidence we have to generate new ideas and guide the actions and decisions we make in our day to day work. I go out and talk to my users. I listen and seek to understand my user’s perspective. I advocate for others to think about their user in their day to day work. I feed the evidence I collect about my users back into the Department. I user-centred research to minimise the risk of ethical harm. See the whole picture We consider how our part of the puzzle interacts and affects the end-to-end experience of our users. We use the right approach for what we are working on, and make connections visible. I seek to understand the problem and find connections before jumping into solutions. I use the right tools and approaches for the specific problem I am solving. I continuously ask questions to broaden my understanding. I quickly bring my ideas to life to make them visible to others. Find different perspectives We bring the right people together at the right time. We use each others’ perspectives, skills, knowledge and experience to deliver solutions. We build and maintain a shared understanding of the intent so that we achieve the right outcomes. I collaborate with the right people at the right time. I use the expertise of others to achieve the right outcome. I am open to new ways of working and thinking. I seek out others with different views to me to enrich my thinking. I have the ability to synthesise perspectives and provide guidance to others. Test, learn and share often We and test ideas early and often to validate our assumptions with our users. We continuously check-in with others and adjust our thinking to stay on track to solve the right problem and deliver the intended outcomes. We are transparent in what we do I create evidence through experiments and prototyping. I reflect on what I have done so that I know what worked, what didn’t and why. I share what I discover as I discover it.
Practitioner I actively build my knowledge of user-centred principles and approaches. I demonstrate my understanding of user-centred principles and approaches and anticipate what support others need to adopt them. I have an increased ability to identify the complexity of a problem. I align the internal services I offer to the key needs of staff. I work with others to support prototyping of user-centric evidence-based policies. I champion user-centred approaches and support others to embrace being user-centred. I change my approach based on the complexity of the problem. I actively work towards increasing compliance with the Australian Government’s Digital Service Standard. I have a detailed knowledge of the difference between good and poor quality user experiences. I approach complex problems using clearly defined methods and pathways. I help others to and create new internal structures, processes and infrastructure to support seamless and integrated service delivery for the public. I continue to explore emerging user-centred approaches and feed them back into the Department. We develop significant policy by applying the user-centred principles and approaches from the start, and with coaching from our practitioners.