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How resources and waste are using a research panel to engage with users

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Defra digital, Defra services, User centred design, User research
A man with short brown hair wearing a blue suit and tie, with cream waistcoat and a white rose on the lapel.

In Recycle Week, Jason Stockwell reflects on the user research process taking place under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging, which will see packaging producers paying the full cost of disposing of packaging waste, money which in turn will be granted to local authorities to cover recycling and disposal costs.

Listening to anglers is helping to improve our fishing licence service

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Defra services, User research
A person holding a carp.

As National Fishing Month gets underway again, we hear from Jenny Yates, Service Owner in our ‘I Want to Fish’ team, about what our latest user research into digital fishing licences shows, and what future improvements anglers might see as a result.

How we're building a bespoke IT system to achieve nutrient mitigation for new house building

On the left a lady, with long fair hair and wearing a black and white spotted blouse, on the right a man with short dark hair and a beard wearing a black and red checked shirt.

Samantha Denham and Gregor Neeve give us a look behind the scenes at the work that went into building a digital solution to support a key plank of the Government’s housebuilding strategy.

Accessibility: designing an inclusive and barrier-free user experience

Posted by: , and , Posted on: - Categories: User centred design
On the left, a minimalistic cartoon avatar of Christopher, a white man with messy brown hair, glasses, and a beard, wearing a bright pink hoodie. Centre, Portrait photo of Chris, a white male with not much cropped brown hair and beard, wearing a checked purple shirt. On the right, Anime style avatar of Zico, a dark skinned man with straight black hair crossing part of his face, and brown eyes, wearing a grey t-shirt and white hooded unzipped grey jacket. Not shown, lots of freckles.

Chris Jenkins, Zico Harris and Christopher J from the Defra Digital, Data and Technology Accessibility Team asked an artificially intelligent large language model a question around this topic. When it served up a generic blog, they decided to write their own instead.

What I’ve learned about panel management in a growing research team – Part Two

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Defra digital, Defra services, User centred design, User research
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Jason Stockwell continues with his blog about managing user research panels. In the second and final part, he discusses the challenge of constant recruitment, how to bring teams together and the prospect of personal burnout.

An agile approach to water abstraction licences

Screenshot of water abstraction beta

Taking fresh water from any natural source is called "abstraction". Most people or organisations who want to abstract more than 20,000 litres of water per day from any single water source in England have to apply for a licence from …