PDIS x Ray4.0 Internship Experience｜Let's improve the government's website by yourself

In this 2020 summer vacation, I am fortunate to be able to participate in the Ray4.0 internship program hosted by PDIS (Public Digital Innovation Space, Executive Yuan). The general public generally perceives government websites as difficult to use.
Without further ado, let's see what we're doing!

 Table of Contents 1. What is PDIS?
2. What is the Ray4.0 project doing?
3. Internship motivation 4. Project introduction and working mode 5. Experience sharing and reflection 6. Where to go next

What is PDIS?

First of all, let's briefly introduce PDIS. PDIS is an innovation group under the political commissar of Tang Feng, which mainly helps the government to improve digital services and optimize the work process of the public sector. Details can be found on their website → PDIS

What is the Ray4.0 project doing?

The full name of the Ray project is "Government Website Digital Service Project for Physical Examination for Young Students", and it is called Ray4.0 for short because this year is the fourth session. In this project, the National Development Committee of the Executive Yuan and various government agencies put forward a list of digital services to be improved, and then cooperated with the interns through PDIS to improve the user experience of the government website.
For more information, please click → Ray4.0 Internship Program Website

Internship motivation

Why do you want to participate in this apprenticeship program?

Apply what you have learned about UX Design to actual Redesign projects

On the one hand, in order to enrich my summer vacation life, I will give myself an experience of transforming actual digital services; on the other hand, I will give myself a chance to try, and use this project to explore how different research methods can be applied to actual design and reengineering.

Understanding Public Sector Collaboration Models

At the same time, I also want to see how government agencies respond to this situation when faced with a situation where the quality of digital services does not meet the public’s expectations in the public sector system, or in different situations in this situation. How to coordinate and cooperate between agencies or within their own departments.

Project introduction and working mode

Project process

Our implementation process is roughly a variation (?) of the double diamond model, called Designing Six Kills

Understand users→Define core issues→Build Wireframe→Lo-Fidelity_Prototype→Hi-Fidelity_Prototype→Results display

Basically, we followed this process for the past two months. In addition to the milestones that need to be completed at each stage, there is a very large research space for us to develop during the process. We also take this opportunity. Tried many different research methods and had the opportunity to share in more detail what we tried at each stage. (digging a hole to be filled)

 The website we reconstructed this time is the Keelung City Government Global Information Network, which is an information-providing portal website. .

Operating mode

Remote Collaboration x Fixed Entity Meeting

1. remote collaboration

This internship program is a remote work mode, which means that you and your partners are basically working remotely, so you need to pay more attention to the progress of the project and the corresponding division of labor arrangements, and to communicate with partners continuously. is also very important.

1. Fixed entity meeting

The regular physical meeting is not only happy to eat and drink, of course, it is also an important milestone release day. At the meeting, you can get feedback from other groups of partners and suggestions from the PDIS team through reports, which are all important for advancing the project itself. Said it was very beneficial.

Experience sharing and reflection

Full remote working mode

So far, I have never tried an almost fully remote working method like this. It has always been based on physical collaboration. The tacit understanding of team members comes from physical meeting and discussion, and remote communication is only available when team members have no choice but to cooperate. The method used is limited to a small number of meetings.

Therefore, the way of working this time has also made me constantly think about how to successfully achieve the overall expected goals of the project, whether it is driven by the current epidemic or the remote working mode that may continue in the future.

• Team tacit understanding: understanding each other's capabilities, expectations, and personal goals that you want to achieve
• Facilitate effective communication between working partners: address the main topic of discussion first, then come back to discuss emergencies
• The detailed formulation of the project schedule and the proper division of labor, as well as the meeting time and method should also be paid attention to!

Think deeply about the appropriateness of different research methods in various contexts

In this project, we have been given a very large research space, which also means that we must closely follow our research goals and formulate possible research methods according to the research goals in order to solve the problems and key points we found. issue.

During the process, we kept asking: Did our research goals address the problems we found? Are there expectations of stakeholders? Have the needs of users been taken into account? What kind of insights can we gain from the execution of such a method?

The best thing about this project is that you can constantly check whether the research method used has achieved the original expected goal through each topic discussion and feedback from different users, and form a holistic design context .

Be bold and do the design, verification will help you correct the direction

In the process, we have a lot of room to play. Whether it is the early user research, to the later design ideas, we have made a lot of different attempts, especially the first time to draw two versions of Wireframe to verify Whether the needs of the target users have been met (the verification method is also very important), and how to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of these two versions and integrate them into the final lo-fi prototype and hi-fi prototype, it really cost us A lot of effort. But it is also because of this that the final design results that meet the needs of users can be produced.

where to go next

The Ray4.0 project this time gave me a complete project experience. The feedback from different groups and the PDIS team and the presentation of different results also gave me a lot of inspiration and reflection. The experience this time is biased towards self-directed team-based project planning. Next, I hope to participate in different side projects to accumulate my awareness of different topics and the application of research methods. I also hope to have the opportunity to experience in the actual industry. working mode and design method.

 Little knowledge discovered during the implementation of the project 1. In addition to looking for public sector vacancies, you can go to the website of each county and city government, you can also find the following two websites. )
‧General Office of Personnel Administration of the Executive Yuan, Employment Information of the Talent Recruitment System of the Personnel Department