Deciding what to improve: Canada.ca design system

You won’t be able to improve everything. Some tasks are much more important to your users – and to your mandate – than others.

On this page

• Identify problematic tasks
• Research problems affecting these tasks
• Prioritize problems to solve
• Figure out what is feasible

Identify problematic tasks

Identify a set of tasks to investigate in more detail by using volumetric data:

• GC Task Success Survey tasks that would most improve your institution score
• GC Task Success Survey tasks with low success scores
• top issue in page feedback
• top call drivers
• top questions received through social media
• topics or services with high web traffic

Research problems affecting these tasks

Frustration expressed through direct feedback

Analyze direct feedback from people attempting these tasks through the GC Task Success Survey, page feedback, previous usability testing or other direct research to help you narrow in on specific problems.

• Collect feedback, find issues (blog post)
• Page feedback pilot

Call drivers, complaints, social media listening

Are you getting more calls, or more complaints from your users about specific services? Is your front-line staff describing areas of struggle? Is there a sudden flurry of posts related to your services on social media? These are clear indicators of areas you may need to focus on.

• The importance of working with call centres (blog post)

Identify if additional research is needed

Do you have enough data to understand the problem space?

Prioritize problems to solve

Once you have identified specific problems affecting these tasks, you’ll need to begin a process to decide what is the most important and impactful to work on.

Factors that influence prioritization

Impacts to users

• Related to a top task
• Major call driver/feedback issue
• Affects many people
• Problem found in usability testing
• Makes future errors less likely
• Corrects accessibility issue
• Corrects an error

Impacts or risks to the department

• Serious implications (financial, legal)
• Major call driver and/or feedback issue
• Current media issue OR likely to be a media issue

External pressures

Consider if there are external pressures on these tasks, such as:

• ministerial request
• ombudsperson request

• alignment with departmental commitments

  • departmental priority (in mandate letters, Departmental plan)
  • budget or legislative priority

Figure out what is feasible

The problems you identify may range from easy fixes to complex service improvements that involve multiple teams, backend systems and software, or other complicating elements.

Aim to find incremental improvements that you can make, no matter the complexity of the problems.

There are different methods and scorecards you can use to help prioritize problems that users are experiencing. These resources can help you learn more about prioritization methods:

• Severity Ratings for Usability Problems - Nielsen Norman Group
• 7 Ways to Prioritize Features and Product Improvements - Planio
• RICE: Simple prioritization for product managers - Intercom
• La guerre du backlog n’aura pas lieu - Eleven Labs (in French only)