OXD Designer Caitlin Aboud gave a virtual tour of OXD to the students attending the GDC/BC Launch 2021 conference on November 26. Student attendees got a sneak peek into our design team, how we collaborate, and tips for successful job applications. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session, where Caitlin answered questions that helped demystify the job hunting process.
Launch is the annual GDC/BC event focused on helping new and emerging designers launch toward a successful design career.
Join Gordon Ross as he reflects on his time spent with the British Columbia Government digital delivery network, working on the COVID-19 response over the first 12 months of the pandemic.
We’re pleased to announce that Gordon Ross is presenting “12 months of COVID-19 Design a Digital Response with the British Columbia Government” at the inaugural Rosenfeld Civic Design 2021 Conference.
COVID-19 arrived slowly and then quickly for governments across the world. By the end of March 2020, lockdowns and states of emergency had been declared. Learn how the government mobilized digital and design talent, how decision-making and situational awareness was achieved, and whether the innovations prompted by COVID-19 led to lasting organizational change or costly chaos.
The virtual Civic Design 2021 Conference, organized by Rosenfeld Media, is December 8-10, 2021.
Dive deep into the tools and mindsets for creating lasting change, designing accessible and equitable services, and buying and hiring for the needed skills. Look beyond today’s challenges, exploring how civic design can be a force for justice, equity, and resiliency in the face of the challenges ahead.
Learn more about registration and join Gord on Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 10:25 am PST for his virtual presentation. Use the discount code ROSS-CD2021 for a $150 USD discount on a regular priced conference ticket.
User experience team members Jacqueline Antalik, Deborah MacKenzie, Winnie Ho, and Gordon Ross are hosting a workshop, “Exploring the past and potential futures of inclusive design”, at the inaugural Magnify—the Inclusive Design and Research Conference. On October 13, 2021 they'll work collaboratively with participants to explore their collective understanding of the past and envision possible futures of inclusive design.
Through inclusive design & research we can work towards equity, elevate voices, challenge power, and enable social justice.
—Magnify Conference
One of the most difficult challenges in moving towards more inclusivity in design is understanding the future state that we’re trying to achieve and how our past experiences influence that future vision. What are we aiming for? What should the world look like as a result of our efforts? What unintentional consequences do we want to stay away from? The answer is different for everyone and there’s much that can be gained from sharing our different visions, hopes, and fears for the future.
This strategic planning workshop using the Future Backwards methods, developed by Cognitive Edge, will help to highlight and compare the range of perspectives a group of people can take in understanding their past, and the possibilities of their future in inclusive design.
During the workshop, participants will work in groups led by our experienced OXD team to:
Describe the current state of inclusive design
Identify significant past events that have led us to our current state
Describe “impossibly good” and “impossibly bad” futures
Connect these futures to the past through a sequence of events and actions
Share output and compare the differing views
Our facilitators will capture the workshop outputs and provide themes and reflections back to participants post-workshop.
The Magnify conference was created from a surge of inspiration when seeing so many talented people practicing inclusive design practices daily across the globe.
Mural artwork on Granville Island by Debra Sparrow, @qwasen, a self-taught Musqueam artist and designer. Photo by Noel Forst.
In observance of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, September 30th is now a statutory holiday at OXD. This date coincides with Orange Shirt Day, commemorating Indigenous children forced to leave their families to attend residential schools.
We’re encouraging our staff and community members to make the most of this holiday. It’s an opportunity to learn, attend an event, and support local Indigenous businesses.
Ways to learn, understand, and participate on this day.
Wear an orange shirt.
Wearing an orange shirt (or hat, scarf, or any orange item) shows solidarity, honouring and remembering residential school survivors and those who did not survive. It’s a visual reminder that we still have much work to do towards reconciliation. Learn more about Orange Shirt Day and Phyllis Webstad by watching this short video.
Offering experiences to see the beauty of nature through Indigneous eyes and feel a deep connection by sharing Indigenous traditions and stories throughout BC.
Based in Port Coquitlam, their beans are sold at over 600 locations across Canada. The company sells a variety of espresso beans including “Raven'' (full of life and strength), “Eagle” medium roast (soaring flavour), and “Frog-Breakfast Blend” light roast (jump start your day).
Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro is entirely Indigenous owned and operated. Their intention is to provide a “gathering place where the focus is on the people and the food”. Their Urban Smoked Salmon Burger sounds amazing to us!
Who doesn’t love a food truck? Mr. Bannock is “Vancouver’s first Indigenous food truck”. The menu boasts fresh local ingredients and ancient cooking methods.
Additional resources
Visit the resources page on the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund website for even more ways to help commemorate the first National Truth and Reconciliation Day.
Join us
We’re making a pledge to move towards reconciliation. Learn more about the initiatives we’re taking to support an inclusive workplace.
OXD worked with the Ministry of Attorney General to improve citizen access to justice with a new e-filing process for uncontested divorce. The digital Online Divorce Assistant Application was originally launched in 2017. This service helped citizens choose the right forms to fill out and reduce errors when they arrived at the Registry office. However, they still had to submit their paperwork in person.
For many people, this was complicated due to accessibility—an ongoing issue with justice services. There are 43 registries in the province, and they are only open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue further, making it even harder for people to access.
To help minimize accessibility issues, the next natural phase was to work with the British Columbia government to add an uncontested divorce e-filing service to their website. This comes as part of a continued strategy to digitize Supreme Court services, improving access to justice for British Columbians.
Reaching more citizens with remote usability testing
Restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown meant we couldn't conduct in-person user testing. But ultimately this constraint was an opportunity for innovation. Thanks to remote usability testing sessions, we were able to reach a broader, more representative pool of citizens than ever before.
We’re still learning
During the course of testing, some of our assumptions about citizens' capabilities—where they did and didn’t struggle—during the proposed e-filing process were challenged. For example, we were expecting people to ask how to upload their signed documents since most people don’t have scanners at home. We were surprised to find out that no one found this part challenging. They knew they could take a picture on their cell phone, email it to themselves, and then upload it to the website. Where people did get confused was around the actual signing of the documents—not knowing they still needed to take it to a Notary—and whether they still needed to do anything in person.
Continuing to improve access to justice
The addition of the uncontested divorce e-filing feature shows how thoughtful and iterative improvements to government services can help make difficult experiences feel a little less burdening for people. This new service means more accessible and efficient ways for citizens to file, while improving processing time for both citizens and justice staff.
We partnered with FortisBC to conduct design research related to integrating new vendors, distributors, and point of sale partners into OXD worked with FortisBC to conduct design research related to integrating commercial equipment suppliers—vendors, distributors, wholesalers, and point of sale partners—into their Find a Contractor application. The application is a directory that helps residential and commercial customers find natural gas and electrical contractors. FortisBC wanted to expand the “Find a Contractor” application to allow commercial customers to find commercial natural gas and equipment suppliers, including those that offer rebates at the point of sale, in the most user-friendly way.
Through a collaborative design session OXD UX Designers helped uncover the needs of FortisBC stakeholders, including commercial equipment suppliers, point of sale partners, and both residential and commercial customers.
The analysis findings shaped a user-centred strategy for offering the new content to commercial customers. Our research-driven wireframes helped FortisBC validate the enhancements with commercial customers, giving them confidence in their business decisions.
Are you looking to improve your company’s customer experience through collaborative discovery? Get in touch with us today.
OXD has been working with FortisBC to investigate, design, and develop new public engagement tools for their existing Talking Energy website. The website is a forum to exchange ideas, opinions, and information about FortisBC energy projects and topics that matter to British Columbians.
The site currently broadcasts project information to people to help them understand what was happening in their community. But FortisBC wants to take things further by improving two-way communication, engaging with users and allowing them to sound off with feedback. Planned improvements include:
Questions and answers
Upcoming Events
Live chats
Live streams
Surveys
Polls
Project timelines
The end-to-end strategy includes building wireframes, design mockups, implementation, and testing. The OXD team will also train FortisBC staff on the new tools, equipping them to manage content updates on their own. With these new options, the website will be more interactive and engaging. Questions from the community that were previously gathered, will be shared in a way that better informs users about the projects.
While changes to the existing website are underway, there is a plan to rebuild the site. Knowing this, we can consider how the Talking Energy website could become more sustainable to support the new engagement strategy. While some of the new engagement tools are being rolled out onto the existing website, others will go live with the redesign launch. This iterative approach means FortisBC can launch new features onto their website much earlier, while still working on the rebuild.
With these new tools, both FortisBC and the communities affected by ongoing energy projects will be better able to understand each other’s opinions, concerns, and feedback. Project timelines, event details, and feedback avenues will be available and easy to find for users.
Want to learn more about our Digital Services and Products to better support customer engagement? View our project work.
We’re excited to share that Gordon Ross was a panelist at the 13th ACM Web Science Conference. The panelists explored the direction of Digital Transformation in different regions across the globe in the government sector.
Chaired by Silas Hooper (formerly Clare Hooper), panelists Gordon Ross, Honey Dacanay, Cyd Harrell, and Sir Nigel Shadbolt covered topics including best and worst practices, what the web enables for the government, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Watch now.
The virtual ACM Web Science 2021 Conference, organized by the University of South Hampton, took place June 21-25th. The theme for WebSci 2021 was Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID-19. The program and speakers covered topics surrounding these challenges in light of the ongoing global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society, and vice versa. As such, the field of Web Science is particularly well situated to address these pressing issues.
