The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) engaged Pragma to conduct a large-scale detailed assessment of the needs of users with respect to industrial elections and protected action ballots – two of the AEC core service offerings that interact with Registered Organisations.

The baseline user research formed the basis and starting point for all future service design activities in this space. Undertaking this work enabled the users of these services to see clear benefits to themselves and others, enabling a better experience matching their motivations and needs. It also allowed the AEC to have a powerful source of evidence to drive better outcomes for the agency and its users.

Pragma undertook the following activities to deliver the user research:

• detailed desktop research taking into consideration existing resources and information sources
• an environmental analysis to identify how users interact with the key technologies, stakeholders and processes
• focussed discussions with users to build an understanding of user sentiment, attitudes and behaviours
• a tailored survey to generate rich behavioural insights and data to support qualitative findings.

Pragma analysed all findings against key scenarios that express the key “jobs to be done” for those engaged with industrial elections and protected action ballots.  By analysing findings in this way, it is easy to understand the analysis within context and empathise with the users.

Pragma delivered three key artefacts as an outcome from this work:

• a comprehensive baseline user research report that contained all the qualitative and qualitative findings, service landscape analysis, system landscape analysis and opportunities for futures service design activities.
• a summary of findings which contained all the key components of the report in summary format for easy access to information
• a placemat version of the report for a snapshot of activities and key findings.

Following the research activities, Pragma then went on to utilise this to provide a comprehensive future service design that leveraged the opportunities identified to provide a concept for the future service system.  The design contained the following:

• a service overview which included the service vision, design principles, user profiles and how the findings from research along with enterprise risks were being addressed through the design
• the future system and user landscape as a connected system (for the two different service types) and the expected high-level IT infrastructure
• the critical service products that are required to deliver the service spanning process and technology (tangible and intangible products)
• service scenarios which articulated how the service will work against the job to be done (as described in the research) – these included detailed journeys for each scenario
• an implementation approach to show how the design could be taken and implemented into service in the AEC as a program of work.