The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) places a significant focus on understanding its users in order to provide a high level of service to all who deal with the agency across all of its schemes.

In order to embed this focus in the design and development of its future services and information systems, the agency is working to build an internal capability sufficient to engage users and conduct effective research. This will ensure the agency meets its requirement that all significant new and improved products and services are designed and implemented based on genuine user needs.

CER engaged Pragma to conduct some early discovery activities to inform the development of a contextualised user research framework and support the development of its dedicated team (including coaching and mentoring, practice and application with real users).

Pragma conducted workshops with key internal stakeholders to understand the context. We developed conceptual models for each of the systems that support the agency’s schemes to understand the tools and techniques required to enable CER to execute user research as effectively as possible.

The User Research Framework was drafted with the intended users of the framework (CER staff) front-of-mind. We worked with staff to understand their expectations and desires along with areas of strength. With this in mind, we designed a contextualised, tailored framework that any staff member can read, interpret and apply to their work.

The second stage of this work was to develop the research plan template that compliments the framework. It draws heavily from the ideas and concepts from within the document so that anyone in the agency who is undertaking research has points of reference to help them understand what to do.

The User Research Framework is a practical document grounded in the CER’s own context. It contains practical examples from everyday life to guide understanding and describes proven methods using language that will help the reader understand what they need to do and how to do it.

The framework was used to guide a baseline user research activity undertaken in partnership with Pragma and the CER. It ensured the agency was able to conduct valuable user research and understand the opportunities for ongoing improvements to the systems and website that support the delivery of its schemes.