The Human-Centred Design Office (HDO) is collaborating with teams across Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) to help them improve the services they deliver to clients. Whether it’s a full service design, usability testing of a new product or a workshop to generate ideas, here are some of the great projects we’ve collaborated on:
- Service design
Together we tackle key business problems by applying design thinking and working directly with your users. - Usability Testing
It’s never too late to involve us in the launch of a new product or service. We test with users as they complete tasks and make recommendations for improvements. - Workshops
We facilitate workshops to help you rapidly get to the root of a problem and explore ideas and innovative ways to solve it.
Service Design
Security made easier
PSPC has 350 Unit Security Officers (USOs) who provide essential security services to employees, including security screenings and access cards.
They do this on a volunteer basis, juggling security duties on top of full-time jobs, often struggling with a lack of training, unclear roles and competing demands. The USO program came to HDO to help them reimagine how security services are delivered to improve the experience for both employees and security officers. Read about the transformation in the Case study – Security made easy.
Pension portal renewal
PSPC’s pension team wanted to transform the pension portal to better meet employee needs as they apply for pension and make meaningful life decisions.
The team came to HDO to help them design a new portal by involving employees every step of the way. Through interviews with employees, usability tests and brainstorming sessions, HDO helped the team create a new prototype that is easy-to-use, intuitive, personalized, accessible and meets employee needs. Read about the transformation in the Case study – Pension portal renewal.
Reimagining the seized property program
PSPC manages the seized property program which is big business – each year, Canadian law enforcement agencies seize almost $35 million in assets from about 5,000 criminal cases.
PSPC’s seized property team, which manages, stores and tracks the seized assets and data, knew they needed to improve their outdated system which is manual, time-consuming, lacks visibility for all partners, and can lead to errors and duplication of effort. They came to the HDO for help. The HDO experts conducted 41 in-depth interviews with staff and partners – from case officers, warehouse managers, system administrators, lawyers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and more. HDO identified pain points in the system, processes and interfaces and recommended business requirements for a future transformative solution that puts users first. The seized property team is working on a proof of concept to make this a reality.
“I appreciated the focus on the pain points of the day-to-day user (case officer). Our current system seems to have been created to assist with financial activities but doesn’t take into account case management. HDO brought to light the issues that case officers face every day. Much appreciated.”
Usability Testing
Giving GCdocs a facelift
PSPC’s GCdocs team needed to replace the aging user interface of the department’s document repository system and came to HDO for help.
The HDO’s UX experts conducted 18 usability tests of the new user interface with a wide range of employees. Participants completed tasks like locating a file and using the search feature and based on HDO’s direct observations and employee feedback, HDO made recommendations for improvements. The GCdocs team took action, creating and testing three different versions of the interface before launching a new and improved “Smart View” GCdocs interface that is more modern, intuitive and easier to use.
Workshops
Helping the Translation Bureau embrace change
The Translation Bureau is undergoing the most significant change in decades as it incorporates Artificial Intelligence and other new technologies into its services.
They wanted to explore innovative ideas and solutions to help employees embrace this transformation. The team conducted two workshops with the Translation Bureau team – a problem framing workshop to fully understand the problem followed by a design sprint which explored ways to support employees through the change. The result was a user-validated prototype that improves two-way communication between employees and management to enable a meaningful exchange of feedback and information. See the Translation Bureau Case Study.
Streamlining the delivery of an HR program
PSPC’s Human Resources Branch’s Official Languages and Diversity team is exploring ways to innovate how it distributes hotel cards (cardholders have access to Government of Canada hotel rates) to help support associations promoting Official Languages in minority communities.
The team struggled with using inefficient processes and outdated tools like Excel to manually manage client information, resulting in errors in client data. The team facilitated a problem framing workshop to articulate the problem and a design sprint to explore innovative, long-term solutions. The workshops resulted in a user-validated prototype that enables clients to digitally manage their own data and receive their hotel cards virtually using QR codes.
Improving employee uptake of internal communications
PSPC’s Corporate Communications wanted to create a department-wide pop-up window to increase readership of corporate messaging by employees. They came to the team to validate whether this was a solution worth pursuing.
The team facilitated a problem framing workshop to articulate the problem and discovered PSPC employees aren’t consuming targeted information, leading to loss of opportunity, frustration and reduced levels of engagement. With a better understanding of the problem, Corporate Communications instead moved forward with a survey to learn why employees aren’t consuming information before investing in a solution.
Helping the Social Procurement team define its vision
PSPC’s Social Procurement team needed guidance to design and implement a new Social Procurement Program, with the underlying goal to build team alignment and increase virtual team collaboration.
The team facilitated two workshops to enable the team to collaborate in defining their vision, mission statement, and map out the priorities and activities for the new program. Together, the team defined their direction and clarified each team member’s roles and responsibilities in the context of the greater team. The Social Procurement team left with tools for virtual collaboration, a better understanding of where they’re going and a sense of synergy between employees.
Improving the Regional Issue Tracker
Directors of PSPC’s Corporate Services team in the Quebec Region needed support to improve how they track and report regional issues.
Through a problem framing workshop conducted by the team, they discovered that the information received by directors is often incomplete and inaccurate, resulting in project management inefficiencies, loss of trust, and a negative impact on employee well-being. The team recommended leveraging existing tools like Microsoft 365 to enable transparency among directors by increasing collaboration and streamlining the issues briefing process.
