Hello, I’m Fred, a product manager working on beta.parliament.uk. At the end of each sprint I’m going to write an update about what the outputs team have done and what we have learned.
We’re in the beta phase of research briefings. Helping people access information so they can better understand topics and debates in Parliament.
If you’d like to read about another team, Alan writes up sprint notes for the people team.
The domain model is done (for now). There were no big surprises about the content but it’s good to see it complete. One interesting part was a cross-over with Members’ activity in the form of the POST board - a group of MPs/Peers who meet to decide future papers published by POST. There’s a few more steps before research briefings exist on beta.parliament.uk, but we’re closer.
Testing has shown that our prototypes are working better, but there are still problems. The core audience for research briefings will always be MPs/Peers, but we want others to understand what they are. We need to do more to help people understand that research briefings are published by the House of Commons Library and not the House of Commons.
Research briefings can be general, specifically about a bill or debate or even statistical updates. John, our Content Designer, has been working on some plain English descriptions for the different types. Users have trouble identifying what research they are looking at, so we’re trying to make sure it’s easy to understand from the very beginning.