Background

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive was established in 2006 to reduce the amount of WEEE going directly to landfill. The directive requires producers and manufacturers to take responsibility for what happens to the products they sell at the end of their working lives.

The WEEE online service transitions existing offline processes into a single online service where producers and schemes can provide the government with the information they need regarding the treatment of electrical and electronic waste.

Objectives

Our key objectives were to:

• · Ensure the product adequately addressed user needs
• · Improve the usability of existing user journeys
• · Ensure all new user journeys were built from user needs rather than business requirements
• · Ensure the product followed established UX and Government Digital Service (GDS) design patterns
• · Address the recommendations from a failed GDS assessment
• · Improve the service for assisted digital users

Outcomes

During the contract, we carried out the following work:

• · Introduced HTML prototyping
• · Iteratively tested multiple prototypes for each user journey
• · Introduced a set of user personas
• · Edited field labels, help text, error messages and validation prompts
• · Introduced help text incrementally from user research feedback

The product passed its beta assessment in November 2015 and currently allows WEEE schemes to file their member registrations online.