User Research

Not-Equal Community Panel

With colleagues at Open Lab, I facilitated Not-Equal’s community panel. In this panel, citizens were supported to participate in making decisions about funding for social-justice oriented tech projects.

Panel members collectively created guidelines for deciding desirable features in projects, and then were supported to evaluate projects against these guidelines. This fed into the process of evaluating the submitted projects alongside (and with equal weighting to) traditional expert reviews.

You can read more about the funded projects here.

NTCA Pandemic Digital Inclusion Scheme Evaluation

In 2021, the North of Tyne Combined Authority hired me to undertake user research evaluating their digital inclusion scheme, which was intended to maintain digital access for school pupils, people in adult education or employability programmes, and care home residents during a time when social distancing restrictions prevented in-person gatherings.

I engaged with NTCA, the three local authorities delivering the scheme, dozens of supporting organisations such as schools and education providers, as well as local residents who benefitted from the scheme. I delivered findings on the success of the scheme in achieving its goals and recommendations to inform future digital inclusion work.