Creating a world-class, consumer-grade, public sector experience
A multi-year initiative to replace and improve all registry applications used to create and manage businesses, register personal property, and register and manage manufactured homes in the province of British Columbia
CLIENT | The British Columbia Ministry of Citizens' Services, BC Registries and Online Services
CHALLENGE
Creating an extraordinary public sector experience with legislative and regulatory constraints, massive and complex legacy applications and systems, vastly different user groups, Agile design and development methodologies, and solidly fixed budgets and timelines.
OUTCOME
A incredibly usable and integrated application that simplified and streamlined the processes of business, personal property, and manufactured home registration in B.C., saving both citizens and the provincial government time and money for years to come.
The Project and Impacts
Forge defined the experience for BC Registries and Online Services modernization project, including:
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BCROS web pages
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BC Registries and Online Services Home Page
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BC Business Registry
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BC Personal Property Registry
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BC Manufactured Home Registry (in progress)
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Applications
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NameX (staff name request review and approval system)
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Business Incorporation and Management (Cooperative Associations, Benefit Companies)
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Name Request
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Personal Property Registry
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Manufactured Home Registry
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Creating a world-class business, personal property and manufactured home registry experience for the citizens and government of British Columbia.
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Extending the user experience beyond what was simply required in the various acts and regulations, including new and novel features and flows that allow all user groups (including citizens, industry professional, and government staff) to truly manage businesses and assets, making the applications useful, usable, and enjoyable to use.
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Creating all designs and patterns to be flexible in an agile continuous improvement process (e.g., designs and pattern for the initial application, Co-operative Associations, were designed to be applied to all Corporations and Firms.), saving the business massively in design and development effort and cost since designs and code could be re-used.
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Having direct and measurable impact on the BC Registries ability to release products and services with world-class user experience on time and on budget using modern product development tools, processes, and project and team structures.
Experience Design Leadership
Forge lead the experience design (interaction design and user / usability research) of all aspects of the BC Registries and Online services applications:
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Creating the application information architecture and application flows within and across applications.
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Designing and re-designing the entire BC Registries system to improve and optimise the flow of business creation and management in B.C. from lo-fidelity to high-fidelity web-based prototypes through initial development to final production delivery and product improvement in new versions, including rapid prototypes, using the province’s citizen-focused, and Forge’s proprietary user-centered, evidence-based approach for web and service design.
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Creating the Web Strategy and a plan to deliver on the Strategy to transform the business from the ‘as-is” structure to the “to-be” structure by designing and re-designing the entire process of starting and managing a B.C.-based business to improve and optimise the flow of business creation and management in B.C. for citizens, industry professionals, and ministry staff.
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Designing all interactions, design patterns, and screens and drafted all site copy for all applications including business entities, name request, the personal property registry, and the manufactured home registry from lo-fidelity to high-fidelity web-based prototypes, including rapid prototypes.
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Designing all interactions, design patterns, and screens and drafting all site copy for all websites and applications including the BC Registries and Online Services home page, business entities, the Personal Property Registry, and the Manufactured Home Registry.
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Creating and designing a powerful, intuitive, contextual, and seamless application help system using iterative user-centered design in an agile development process.
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Managing legacy systems transition from mainframe and older web front and back-end systems to modern front and back-end systems
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Developing digital systems for legacy paper systems and processes
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Overseeing all user research (including co-creation sessions and application usability evaluations) for all BC Registries applications. Leading user research establishing the usability of the initial design patterns, allowing a highly usable designs to be re-used for future applications, avoiding costly re-design and re-development later and helping product owners and business stakeholders with objective measures of product quality (i.e., product owners and business stakeholder knew if their product was any good before the released it).
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Overseeing and directing all Visual Design for all BC Registries and Online Services web pages and applications, including colour, typography, layouts, icon design, and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 Level AA Conformance.
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Design Team Leadership
Forge lead the creation and management of the BC Registries and Online Services modernization project:
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Introducing and defining the registries design system, processes, and design discipline
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Creating and leading multi-disciplinary design team processes including mentoring and transferring knowledge to in-house Registries staff designers and third-party designers and researchers (employees of from other contractors) including team design system tool selection, design review procedures within the design team, project team, product ownership, registries staff, and other stakeholders.
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Managing and overseeing all work of visual designers, internal registry designers, and all third-party designers and researchers.
Program and Process Leadership
Forge lead the definition of design in the BC Registries and Online Services Agile modernization project:
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Defining and working in the BC Registries and Online Service “user experience stack”: UXpin, Sketch, Invision, Vuetify, Survey Monkey, and Forge’s proprietary tools, and integrating the experience design stack into the Registries' agile development tools and processes.
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Working in, and helping define the Registries’ Agile working mode and environment
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Introducing and helping to define the registries product management processes and discipline
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Establishing and executing a process to help capture and define user requirements with user and stakeholder input, integrated into an iterative, continuous improvement cycle.
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Liaising with Senior Managers of the Program and the organization’s executive including Executive Director and the executive leadership team; presenting designs and user research studies to project team, product owners, executive leadership team and executive director.
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