Ordnance Survey

Design to Research

Originally I was hired as a Product Designer at Ordnance Survey, working mainly on OS Maps (app and web), and across other consumer projects. OS Maps is a mapping application across web and mobile that gives users access to Ordnance Survey's national topographic maps along with millions of outdoor hiking, cycling, paddling... etc routes.

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After about a year and a half in this role, I started to realize that the part of being a Product Designer that I enjoyed the most was the research aspect. Understanding the behaviours of our users and the unique ways they use our products continuously fascinates me.

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I noted to my manager that we lack a UX Researcher in our team and he allowed me to transition my role into a UX Researcher. In this role, I explore big picture ideas by helping define the problems that go into product discovery.

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Some problems I have tried to solve were "How do users find routes?", "What makes a user subscribe?", and "Would our users like X feature?".

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I love trying to understand our users and how we can evolve OS Maps to help them. OS Consumer's ethos is to "Get more people outside more often" and I am so interested in understanding how a user's behaviour on a site or app can encourage them and others to do an outdoor activity.

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My Process

I always start out with a problem statement. For example, if I am trying to learn what issues users have while creating a route, I would write a short statement in which ways a user might be struggling when trying to plot a route.

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For primary research I would set up several tests in user testing platforms (such as UserZoom and Hotjar) testing these potential problem areas. I would create a combo of usability and general probing surveys to help understand why the users might be having issues.The tests would be targeted at OS Maps users across all countries where OS Maps is available and to the general public to compare as someone trying to create a route for the first time.

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I would set up interviews and surveys with our reference customer and our user testing groups to get their feedback on this problem.

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For primary research I compare the analytics of our users, look into previous studies, and compared notes with my colleagues.

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Once I have gathered all information as throughly as possible, I create an unbiased report on the data. This write up compares all results looking for insights on the problems. As a 10 page document is not something that any stakeholder (let alone anyone) wants to sit down and read, I then use my design skills to create infographics of the findings.

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Information is retained much more in a visual form vs Power Point slides. I wanted to ensure information could be easily shared across my team and beyond.

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Once I have shared these infographics to my team and any key stakeholders, they are then used and referenced in discovery to help find solutions to the user problem.

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Insight Management

At my time at Ordnance Survey I was involved in a cross business-wide innovation project. I led a cross functional team trying to understand how could we evolve our current insight hub and have the it become a source of truth at OS.

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In the end, we created a playbook for the relevant team who would manage the insight hub that included:

• A tested and approved tag structure with examples
• What the process of uploading documents will be like
• What types of people are we looking for as librarians (people who will manage the hub) and the librarian job role
• How librarians should be distributed across the company
• An engagement plan
• And a plan to keep the innovation of the insight hub moving forward

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Evangelism and Improving UX Maturity

I am also very passionate about evolving the UX Maturity and evangelizing UX across Ordnance Survey.

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I champion UX at OS by:

• Helping run a user testing guild where anyone at OS wanting to know more about user testing could come and ask questions
• Promote and helping procure better UX tools and software and advocated for synchronized UX assets across UX teams
• Collaborating with other UXers across the company to better help share insight
• Proposed changes and better ways of working for UX, such as UX working in a matrix model
• Encouraged colleagues to 'think customer' at every stage of the process
• Helping define UX metrics to track over time

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