This from .gov Slack channel brunton_o_spalkl at moj on 20 September 2019:
For a service assessment on user research. Be clear on what user research you have carried out. Provide a good slide that tells the reviewers how many workshops you've done, and with how many participants. Break down one-on-one research from interviews, from pop-up questions or ethnographic research. We/I hated hearing that we've done 600 piece of user research and having to dig to discover that means they did 595 surveys and 5 one on one interviews.
Build a deliberate narrative. The best possible thing you can do in a service assessment is tell the assessor a story about how you did a piece of user research, the finding was not what you expected, how you synthisied it for the team and they made a change to the design/system. That you took the changed design back out for research and the results showed an improvement.
At it's basics, the service assessor is looking for evidence that you are asking questions to challange the design, that the design is driven by the results of the user research, and that you are making decisions as a project on the back of real evidence where you can.
I'm not aware of an IPA reviewer ever really caring about user research. They are normally deployed to programmes of work that are significant and which someone for some reason thinks is Amber/Red in terms of delivering on the original business case.
Where we've done IPA reviews it's almost always concentrating on looking at project finance, project governance and senior level ownership of the programme of work.
This from .gov Slack channel brunton_o_spalkl at moj on 20 September 2019:
For a service assessment on user research. Be clear on what user research you have carried out. Provide a good slide that tells the reviewers how many workshops you've done, and with how many participants. Break down one-on-one research from interviews, from pop-up questions or ethnographic research. We/I hated hearing that we've done 600 piece of user research and having to dig to discover that means they did 595 surveys and 5 one on one interviews. Build a deliberate narrative. The best possible thing you can do in a service assessment is tell the assessor a story about how you did a piece of user research, the finding was not what you expected, how you synthisied it for the team and they made a change to the design/system. That you took the changed design back out for research and the results showed an improvement. At it's basics, the service assessor is looking for evidence that you are asking questions to challange the design, that the design is driven by the results of the user research, and that you are making decisions as a project on the back of real evidence where you can. I'm not aware of an IPA reviewer ever really caring about user research. They are normally deployed to programmes of work that are significant and which someone for some reason thinks is Amber/Red in terms of delivering on the original business case. Where we've done IPA reviews it's almost always concentrating on looking at project finance, project governance and senior level ownership of the programme of work.