Spotlight on UX at PDMS

Two talented individuals have recently joined our growing Design & User Experience (UX) team at PDMS. 

Experienced creative Tersia Christoforos has joined PDMS as a UX Designer. Based in Aberdeen, Tersia has over fifteen years’ experience working within design agencies, before specialising in UX. In her role as UX Designer, she collaborates with our clients, researching, evaluating and designing the flow, accessibility and visual design of websites and software. 

Her diverse design agency career has provided Tersia with a background in varied industries, allowing her to draw on this experience when advising our clients on UX & Design best practice. 

An already familiar face to many staff and clients, Hannah Shaw has been with PDMS since 2015 and has recently crossed into the UX & Design team as a UX Content Strategist. In this more specialised UX role, Hannah is primarily responsible for planning and delivering digital content, communications & training for clients. 

From generated messages, help text and calls to action to full articles and social communications, Hannah will be drawing upon her experience working with councils, colleges and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs)  in the UK to provide insights and make practical recommendations for improving user experience and audience engagement, as well as providing training and support on web CMS and analytics products. 

Focus on User Experience

The latest appointments reflect PDMS’ commitment to integrating a User Experience process as part of software development. Statistics show that doing so results in websites and applications that are user-centric, intuitive, efficient and enjoyable – or as Elon Musk put it, ‘If a product needs a manual, it’s broken.’ 

Considered UX research and design techniques improve the customer journey, add value to the brand and allow users to navigate websites quicker which helps to increase customer experience and boost loyalty.  

The UX principles that we apply to research, design and development at PDMS centre around making sure that new products and services are: 

• Valuable 
• Useful 
• Usable 
• Accessible 
• Findable 
• Credible 
• Desirable 

Here are two examples of the application of UX principles in action for our clients:

The Midlife MOT

The Midlife MOT for Humber LEP was commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and was aimed at delivering a three-month solution for the over 50s struggling to enter the world of work.  

PDMS and the Humber LEP kicked off the project with user research to frame the problem. This included workshops with a wide range of stakeholders such as DWP, Public Health England, The Money and Pensions Service, Active Humber, and the National Careers Service. This resulted in agreement on the key problem areas and goals to align services to work together to better address the challenges:  

• Raise awareness of challenges faced by target demographic  
• Help reach those most at risk of experiencing long-term employment  
• Grow awareness amongst employers of the need for and benefits of a healthy workforce  
• Establish wider recognition from employers that they have a part to play, not only for their workforce but for their business going forward 

Key messages and the tone of voice were also explored, iterated and agreed to ensure the communication strategy was effectively positioned to reach as many Humber residents and businesses as possible.  

At the end of the project, DWP commented on how pleased they were with the content we delivered and were impressed by the results the campaign yielded.  

Read more about the Humber LEP case study here.

Crown Commercial Services

Another example of great UX in action is our Crown Commercial Services Car Leasing Portal project which required a redesign of the portal to ensure that UK government managers and workers could easily browse and choose fleet & car leasing options. Prior to the redesign of the site, the car leasing process required a lot of support from the CCS team to provide the most suitable options for each scenario, adhering to economical and green government guidelines. 

PDMS applied design thinking to this problem and ideated with the client to create the optimal user journey with story mapping sessions. There was a focus on reducing lengthy processes required by CCS so that users can self-serve more efficiently within the portal.  

The teams then moved on to a prototyping phase which involved multiple iterations, starting with low fidelity wireframes and User Interface flows to iron out the micro-interactions important to the process. Vehicle comparison was a feature born out of this stage in the process, which was then brought to life with HTML prototypes. The prototype was then reviewed and A/B tested by a wider audience including end users.  

Following the relaunch – 869 organisations registered, over 600 above target with more than 1600 registered users, double the initial target. A survey was carried out with an increased Net Promoter Score and great user feedback in relation to how easy the portal is to use and navigate. 

Read more about the CCS case study here.

UX at PDMS

At PDMS, great UX and design is achieved through a disciplined application of process, tools and mindset, and is central to the way we plan, design and build and test our software and websites.  

To find out more about our UX Design services, visit our Web Design and Development page