

Things we learnt designing 'Register to vote' - joelanman
https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2014/07/14/things-we-learnt-designing-register-to-vote/

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colmvp
> 2\. It’s easier to discover what to add than what to remove

> Seeing that very few people had a problem on this step enabled us to hide
> the help text behind a link – making the screen simpler for the majority.

Awesome. So often I work with people who don't have the courage to at least
try/test a solution that doesn't treat the people who will use the product
like an idiot and instead populate as much instructional text as possible.

~~~
joelanman
Regular testing with users is key to an approach like this - we mostly test
every couple of weeks, sometimes going weekly if there's a particularly sticky
problem to solve

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anon1385
I can't believe these clowns are still using Google Analytics. Who the hell
thinks that an advertising corporation in a foreign country that has no
privacy regulations should be profiling and tracking my activity when I
interact with my government. That includes interactions like registering to
vote, 'anonymously' reporting crimes[1], applying for a passport[2] or driving
licence[3].

Thankfully the gov.uk hipsters haven't got to the inland revenue sites so at
least Google doesn't know my tax details. Yet.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6985916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6985916)

[2] [https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-passport](https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-
passport)

[3] [https://www.gov.uk/apply-first-provisional-driving-
licence](https://www.gov.uk/apply-first-provisional-driving-licence)

~~~
ihuman
Do you have a UK-based, secure, and trustworthy alternative?

~~~
pdkl95
Apache/NGINX logs. Like we used to do before everybody decided to "outsource"
that task.

Hosting service doesn't provide access to the log files? Get a better hosting
service, as that used to be a fairly standard feature. CDN or caching proxy
doesn't give you the log files (or at least summarized stats)? Start demanding
they provide that feature, or switch to a different service/vendor.

Existing log parsers are missing some type of statistical analysis that Google
provided? Option 1: Do you _really_ _need_ that feature, or is it simply
"cool" or "might be useful"? Option 2: write it yourself; doing stats on log
files isn't particularly hard.

I never understood why everybody was so quick to give Google such massive
amounts of valuable data in exchange for something as trivial as a log parser
and a few gnuplot charts. None of this needs as 3rd party.

Besides: why do you assume that the analysis provided by google-analytics is
_accurate_? A lot of us block {,www.,ssl.}google-analytics.com and are not
included. You cannot opt-out of the apache log and still get the page.

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NickPollard
I did not even know this was possible, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
As someone who has had numerous electoral roll forms sent piled up in my
letterbox, refusing to cease since repeatedly filling them in and sending them
back, it's great for the government to provide this.

Big thanks and congratulations to the team that delivered this.

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basicallydan
I used this tool a couple of days ago when I moved house. It was a real joy.
Good job, GDS team.

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dchest
Noticed this strange date entry form:
[http://imgur.com/fdaUEi1](http://imgur.com/fdaUEi1)

I wonder how many people correctly understood that you have to select a month
and enter a _year_ in the second field.

~~~
joelanman
Good spot! I'll raise it for fixing

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suzyperplexus
I love the gov.uk people. Their design principles doc is still bookmarked for
me [https://www.gov.uk/design-principles](https://www.gov.uk/design-
principles)

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seanhandley
"Things we learned"

~~~
seanhandley
"Things we learned". When you say "learnt", it's when used as an adjective (a
describing word).

For instance "My knowledge of grammar is learnt". When you're using it as a
verb (a doing word), it's "learned" i.e. "Today, I learned something".

Today you learned about "learned", hopefully that's your lesson "learnt".

~~~
joelanman
Interesting - do you have a source for that?

~~~
fallingbadgers
According to the sources I can find "learnt" is the English and "learned" the
American version [http://www.grammar-
monster.com/easily_confused/learned_learn...](http://www.grammar-
monster.com/easily_confused/learned_learnt.htm)

