Social Security Scotland
Sector of work | Public
Designing a new online form for reporting benefit fraud in Scotland
To be included on the Scottish Government website, mygov.scot
Created for Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government
Overview
The Scottish Government required an online form for the general public to report benefit fraud crimes in Scotland. This was an existing problem as fraud offences were being committed against new benefits released by Social Security Scotland.
To ease the issue, I worked alongside a large and diverse team of stakeholders to plan, design and introduce a new online fraud reporting form. This form was designed to sit on the Scottish Government website, mygov.scot.
Methods of work
Content design
Service Design
Content strategy
Interaction design
Wireframing
Design ideation
Prototyping
User interface design (UI)
User research
User experience design (UX)
User flow maps
Collaborative design
My role in the project
Senior Content Designer
Stakeholders
Scottish Government
General public
Social Security Scotland
mygov.scot
September 2019 to August 2020
Project dates
Plan, design and build new online fraud reporting tool for Social Security Scotland
Work with fraud stakeholders to understand area of work and how form should function
Test new designs with different user groups
Investigate and scope offline solution
Follow Digital Scotland and GOV.UK design systems and principles
Communicate work to teams throughout the Scottish Government
Objectives
Discovery
Alpha
Private beta
Public beta
Project phases
Miro
Figma
Sketch
Microsoft Azure
Jira
Confluence
SharePoint
Microsoft Office
SharePoint
Software and applications used
Project insights
Designing a new online tool to report benefit fraud
Working alongside fraud subject matter experts
Planned, designed and developed within 11 months
MVP rolled out to mygov.scot as scheduled on day 1
1
Defining the challenge
To design, test and implement a new online fraud reporting tool that allowed the general public to report fraud offences against Social Security Scotland.
Planning
I began working on the Fraud online reporting form project at the outset during the pre-discovery phase when it was decided to introduce this new service to mygov.scot.
The initial introductory meetings involved stakeholders from throughout the business. We discussed the initial brief as provided by the Head of Fraud and Error Resolution Division for Social Security Scotland.
As the Senior Content Designer on the project, I took the lead on all content aspects associated with the project. This included making content recommendations and suggestions. I oversaw another Content Designer on this project. And worked closely with fellow user-centred practitioners from User Research and Interaction Design.
Research and analysis
From the beginning of this project, I recommended we look closely at how other government agencies offer users the chance to report fraud cases. I felt this was the best route to go down with this project as there were already established means of reporting fraud cases used by other agencies.
Based on my recommendations, we reviewed and analysed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). And the Inland Revenue service for the New Zealand Government.
The user-centred design team on the project looked at both agencies and how they capture data from users. We used this as the basis for our hypothesis of how to create the form. And then conducted research with users to validate this.
2
My work in the project
As the Senior Content Designer on the fraud project, I led all content-related design work and deliverables. I collaborated alongside a User Researcher and Interaction Designer to plan, design, test and iterate the final product we delivered on behalf of the fraud team at Social Security Scotland.
Initial design and build
After this, I worked with our User Research colleagues to understand what we had learned during the initial testing phase.
We took this research and what we knew about existing assets to begin creating solutions for what the form should look like.
During this phase of work, I worked closely with my fellow Content Designer and Interaction Designer. Our work included ideating several solutions for what we felt would fulfil our users' needs.
We worked together to sketch out how we saw this resource in its final form. Then, we set about designing the best solution we felt balanced the users' needs with the business requirements.
Showcase and feedback
Having regular showcases and gathering stakeholder feedback is one of the most important aspects of any project.
It's also one of the most difficult tasks as a user-centred designer.
As part of the project team, I was responsible for presenting our most recent work and potential solutions. Our audience included senior stakeholders from both the Fraud division and Ministers from the Scottish Government.
This presented us with a unique opportunity to champion the merits of user-centred design. And why it's important to design a product the user can intuitively use.
Collaboration
Collaborating with your fellow stakeholders on a project of this size is always important.
On this project, I worked closely with my fellow user-centred designers. These stakeholders worked across content design, user research and interaction design.
This side of the team was responsible for ideating both effective and successful solutions. We also champion the user and design primarily to meet their needs.
I also worked alongside Fraud Product and Case Officers closely.
This was important as it was these stakeholders who would go on to manage the resource after we released it to the public.
Continue design iteration
Ideas for where we saw the final design of this product continued evolving throughout the project. This was often down to changing requirements from stakeholders.
Here, the continued iteration of the product became the main focus of the team. It was here we were able to identify what our minimal viable product (MVP) would be for the initial release. From this, we were able to scope what the finished product would also look like.
The user-centred design stakeholders pitched the idea of us creating an MVP product. But, concurrently, we would also continue working on the finished product in the backdrop of the project.
This approach was effective and successful in ensuring the team was in a position to launch the new product as soon as practicable possible. It also enabled us to create a plan to iterate the product immediately after release.
This formed the wider release plan. This is something that is often overlooked in public sector project management.
3
Results of the project
✔
Project on time and within budget
✔
Users can report benefit fraud online
✔
Long-term feature roadmap established
✔
Additional features ready to roll out
Final review before release
I was involved with the final review process of this project before releasing it to the public. This is standard for any project I work on as the Senior Content Designer.
During the review process, I worked with stakeholders in the project team to ensure everyone was happy with what we planned to release.
The review was thorough. This involved reviewing all content within the form. And testing the form from start to finish in a staging environment.
I also submitted several test reports to ensure the product worked as we expected. Then, I worked to review the test reports with our Fraud Case Officers to ensure the reports produced results as they expected. This was important as this was the team responsible for processing applications the user would send.
The testing process took around two weeks in total to complete.
Implementation and release
We released the online fraud reporting form to the public for first use in August 2020. This form sits on the official Scottish Government website – mygov.scot. It gives users the means to report fraud offences committed in Scotland. All submitted forms are sent to the Fraud Reporting Team. During the roll-out to the live environment, I worked alongside our Development and Release Teams. This was to ensure the accuracy of the product ahead of and during release. This is a process I was involved in during all stages, including final tests ahead of launch.
4
Learnings from the project
Pressures of a project at ministerial level
The devolved benefits package in the Scotland Act 2016 saw the Scottish Government assume responsibility for delivering £3 billion of benefits throughout the country. As a result of this, Social Security Scotland became a target of fraudulent benefit claims.
As this was such a significant change in how benefits were delivered in Scotland, this carried a higher profile for the project to deliver a means of reporting benefit fraud. This also brought about pressure from a ministerial level within the Scottish Government in terms of delivering the project on time and within budget.
Working under such pressure was at times tough and often threatened to derail the user-centred design approach to the service. However, fostering positive working relationships proved vital as this helped mitigate the pressure the team found itself under to deliver a timely fraud reporting tool to protect Social Security Scotland.
Staying true to user-centred design principles
As said in the previous section, the pressure felt from a ministerial level of the Scottish Government often threatened to derail the user-centred design approach to work Social Security Scotland had stated it intended to take as part of the Scotland Act 2016.
While the pressure was there from senior stakeholders at a government level, I found it of the utmost importance to stick to taking a user-led approach to designing this product. In the face of growing pressure, it’s easy to make decisions that do not fully account for your end user. Whereas, I’m pleased to say, in this case, this was not something that ever happened as myself, along with the wider UCD team, stood firm on maintaining the correct approach to our work.