Provide and update planning and housing data for England design history
A service to help organisations to ensure their planning and housing data meets specifications, publish their data and provide data to the Planning Data platform.
Posts
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Telling users when their BFL data needs updating
The problem
Local planning authorities are required to update their brownfield land datasets by 31 December each year. It’s important for us to remind LPAs … -
Provider service walkthrough: Part 3 — check flow
The check flow is launched from the dataset details page.
There has been feedback that users want a more immediate way to access this page, so a stand along… -
Provider service walkthrough: Part 2 — walkthrough
Service walkthrough
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Provider service walkthrough: Part 1 — principles and context
Provider service walkthough
Whilst designing the provider service, we used established usability principles. We followed the Nielsen Norman Group NNG Usabil… -
Out of bounds expectations checks
The problem
To improve the quality of data on the platform, expectations checks are being added to identify issues with the information beyond the validity … -
Displaying data from alternative sources
The problem
Not all data on the platform has been provided by LPAs: a variety of different sources are used for various datasets for example, Historic Englan… -
Making it easier to submit data
The problem
Historically, users have had to email our data management team whenever they had datasets ready to submit. This caused a few problems:
1. Users… -
Playing back LPA’s data
The problem
Initially, when the service was a tool which checked the quality of data, LPA’s did not have the means to see the data they had provided to the … -
Improving the usability of guidance
The problem
Team turnover on any project often means that multiple people eventually work on certain parts of a service, sometimes without knowledge of prev… -
Improving our communication with LPAs
Improving our communication with LPAs around providing data and increasing their familiarity with the service
The problem
As a programme, we want to clea… -
Dashboard iterations
The problem
Initially, the service was a tool which checked LPAs’ data. They had no way of understanding the landscape of data they were providing to the Pl… -
Adding a landing page and removing the start page
The problem
Observations and insights in user research sessions highlighted that users weren’t reading the content on the start page and were going for 'the… -
Aligning outbound messaging across the service
The problem
As a service, we regularly engage with LPAs, mainly through email communications. We’ve recently started using GOV.UK Notify to automate some em… -
Encouraging LPAs to update brownfield land data
The problem
Brownfield land BfL is land which has previously been developed upon.
The Town and County Planning Brownfield Land Register Register 2017 requ… -
Using email reminders to help users fix their data
The problem
Up until recently, users were not automatically notified about the status of their data unless they accessed the service to check their dashboar… -
Improving data quality issue messages
The problem
Our core mission as a service is to encourage and support Local Planning Authorities in providing trustworthy and high quality planning and hous… -
Check tool
The problem
Our service not only allows users to submit their datasets, but users can also use it to check their data for any errors before submitting.
We… -
Handling multiple endpoints
The problem
Some local planning authorities LPAs have multiple active endpoints for a single dataset. This is particularly common for LPAs that joined the p… -
Improvements to service navigation
The problem
Navigation was inconsistent across the provider’s service, dataset guidance and the rest of the planning data platform.
There wasn’t a consiste… -
Improving content in the ‘check your data’ flow
The problem
We spotted an opportunity to improve some of the content in the ‘check’ flow to make things clearer for users who are checking their data for er… -
Service map and blueprint
The problem
When a new Service Designer joined the team, we spotted an opportunity to create an up-to-date service map and blueprint. We decided that it wou… -
Data quality notification emails
The problem
We want to improve the quality of the data we have on the Planning Data Platform. We therefore wanted to explore if receiving notification of iss… -
Creating the minimum viable service (MVP)
The problem
The planning data providers service was originally comprised of a single tool to allow LPAs to check the validity of their datasets. Once the da… -
Giving users feedback on their datasets
The problem
The planning data providers service was originally comprised of a single tool to allow LPAs to check the validity of their datasets. Once the da… -
Processing files asynchronously in the check tool
The problem
In order to improve the stability and reliabilty of the check tool, especially when handling large data files, the dev team needed to impl… -
Helping users check their data is correct
At the moment, we tell users about any mistakes in their data that do not follow the specification/first-release.
But users need to also check their data is… -
Checking data by URL
At the moment, users have to upload their dataset to be checked.
But some local planning authorities use tools like ArcGIS to publish their data online.
So… -
Tracking performance of the service
To make sure the service is working well, we’ll track:
- completion rate
- completion time
- form validation error rate
- data specification error rate
- sa… -
There’s a problem with the service page (500)
Here’s what someone will see if there’s a problem with the service:
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Session timed out page
Here’s what someone will see if the session times out due to a long period of inactivity:
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Service unavailable page (503)
Here’s what someone will see if the service is unavailable on purpose:
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Page not found page (404)
Here’s the page someone will see when we cannot find the page they were trying to view:
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Collecting feedback from users
We’ll allow users to give feedback through a link:
- in the phase banner at the top of every page of the service
- on the confirmation page
How it works
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First release
We’ve designed a simplified version of the service so that:
- we can deliver value more quickly to users
- get user feedback based on real data
How it wor… -
Iteration 2
We recently tested a service to allow local planning authorities LPA to publish their planning and housing datahttps://publish-planning-and-housing-data.desi…
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First prototype
Getting data from local planning authorities LPA and onto our platform is slow.
For example, we have to:
- ask users to send us their data
- check the data…