Insights - NEC Digital Studio

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15 September 2023 · Articles

Resolving common website accessibility issues

Our experts discuss some of the most common website accessibility issues and how to resolve them.

13 September 2023 · Articles

Show us your messy bits

What is mess, why is it scary, and why do service designers love it? Here, we talk to Tom White and Olivia Holbrook from the NEC Digital Studio Service Design Team about the chaos and complexity of service design projects.

11 September 2023 · Articles

The Beta phase is where you see your agile project in action

The Beta phase of an agile project is where you develop your service for real. The prototype created in Alpha needs to be brought to life with the right infrastructure and support behind it. That’s not to say that changes can’t happen in Beta, of course. It’s not supposed to be the finished article. But some changes are more costly than others, so the key is to plan ahead.

11 September 2023 · Articles

Getting the most from the Discovery phase of an agile project

The Discovery phase of an agile project sets you up for the journey ahead. Yet we know from delivering projects in every phase that there’s rarely a clean ‘cut’ to Alpha. That’s why it’s important to keep the end-to-end in mind: it helps to keep your projects on course even if the delivery partners change.

11 September 2023 · Articles

The Alpha phase: resist the temptation to rush it

The Alpha phase of an agile project is about looking at the findings made in Discovery and exploring what works. It’s a vital step on the path towards a great service that keeps things simple. Sometimes, it’s when you realise you’ve gone the wrong way, but we’ve learned to love that feeling. Because it means you’ll build something better in Beta.

An arial view of a pile of sticky notes spread out on a table

17 May 2023 · Articles

Defining the difference between analysis and synthesis in user research

The terms ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ are used differently by different researchers, which can lead to confusion about what processes people are specifically referring to. Here, we clarify this for you.

4 May 2023 · Articles

Applying behavioural design to help people make more sustainable choices

Learn how to apply behavioural science techniques to change habits and drive the adoption of more sustainable actions. In this article, we focus on how our practice is integrating learnings from behavioural sciences to address the climate emergency.

Two people designing in the public and private sectors illustration

16 February 2023 · Articles

Differences designing in the public and private sectors

In this article, Martyn Dawson, Principal Interaction Designer at NEC Digital Studio, shares his insight on the differences and similarities when designing in both the public and private sector.

2 August 2022 · Articles

We built a user research library with Hackney Council

Read how our team launched a prototype, The User Research Library, to help government teams share, discover and connect user research.

2 August 2022 · Articles

Transitioning Careers — Advice from a Service Design team

Want to become a Service Designer? Read some helpful advice from NEC Digital Studio’s Service Design experts on transitioning into a career in service design.

Team collaborating on service user engagement

5 July 2021 · Articles

How modern technology can help to improve service user engagement

Watch the NEC team and a guest panel of industry practitioners explore the reasons why there is often poor engagement between service users and service providers in the criminal justice system, and how technology can be used to improve service user engagement.