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03. Provide a joined up experience across all channels

Work towards creating a service that meets users’ needs across all channels, including online, phone, paper and face to face.

The service team is empowered to find the best way of solving the problem

  • The team has been truly integrated, with UKSA, orbital analysts, and supplier (The PSC) staff meeting at least daily, and our academic partners Cranfield University joining us weekly/ fortnightly.
  • The cross-organisational team has been 100% empowered to solve the problem.
  • We have used Show and Tells to communicate our work so far to senior stakeholders, who have been both highly supportive of our work and approach, along with supplying guidance and challenge where necessary.
  • We have run tech spikes (team meetings to discuss the most complex problems and decisions) whenever necessary to ensure that we collaborate on tough problems and align on our solutions.
  • We have daily stand-ups to discuss our tasks and any blockers, along with weekly backlog grooming sessions to go over all tasks and ensure we are on track.

Front line operations staff and policy people are invited to attend user research and to contribute to prioritisation decisions

  • Orbital analysts from Raytheon NORSS have been actively involved in the project throughout. They have attended many of the daily stand-ups, tech spikes and has provided extensive feedback.
  • During alpha, UKSA staff attended user research regularly to gain an insight into our user testing methodology and operator’s feedback.
  • Private beta included 3-5 different operators, who have been invited to provide feedback (and indeed have) at every stage.
  • All UKSA team members joined our Minimum Viable Product definition session at the start of the private beta, with UKSA staff leading on prioritising post-MVP features. All decisions were made having consulted the tech team (regarding technical feasibility and complexity) and user research (regarding priority to the user).
  • During public beta we are constantly asking operators for feedback via feedback forms, 1-month check ins and informal catch ups.

Designers and user researchers are working with front line operations staff

  • The interface has been tested regularly with operations staff - both during alpha and beta.
    • During alpha, frontline staff were interviewed and their feedback was used to iterate the prototype and inform our technical architecture options appraisals. User testing was undertaken with frontline staff twice across each of the two alphas for conjunction and then re-entry services.
    • Throughout the development process in beta, we regularly shared the updates to the interface with operations staff to gather their feedback.

They are testing and can make changes to users’ experience of both online and offline channels (for example, call centre scripts and letters)

  • Testing has been conducted with all user groups across the alpha and private beta.
    • The orbital analysts in particular have been consulted throughout to make sure that the data is correct, is presented well, and that they can add their analysis.
  • Our agile approach has enabled us to quickly respond to feedback and re-adjust the backlog prioritization. Hence, if new feedback has been received and is deemed to be of high priority, we can adjust our backlog and ensure it is completed as quickly as possible.
  • We have ensured to work with stakeholders in all channels of the user experience. For example, we have met with UKSPoC, MOD, CAA and others who satellite operators interact with frequently regarding their satellite operations.
    • We spoke with the CAA to inform them that the existence of the system would influence their licensing process. For example, in the licensing application, we would need the operator to select a point of contact for the Monitor Space Hazards service.
    • We tested our API with orbital analysts.

Data and user research on the online part of the service is used to improve offline channels, and the other way around

  • The service is almost entirely online, though we can model some of the workflows as “offline” in so far as there is human intervention by the orbital analysts to improve the quality of analysis and predictions.
  • Our user research has demonstrated that the experience would be much better online than the old offline system for both conjunction and re-entry alerts.
  • We have worked with analysts as part of the core team throughout the service development, to ensure that the proposed MSH product:
    • Can be fed by the data they produce
    • Is in line with or improves their current workflows
  • In the future, there are more offline processes which could be improved, such as on-the-ground response to re-entry events and reporting of hazards to ministers.

Front line operations staff who are responsible for answering users’ questions know how the online service works, and there’s a process for keeping them up to date with changes

  • When the service goes live, the UKSA SST team will be responsible for answering users’ questions. This team is very familiar with how the service works but will be supported throughout the trial by the The PSC team. In addition, a newsletter will be released for all new releases to ensure that all users and operations staff are kept up-to-date.
  • We have deployed a ‘Contact an analyst’ feature creating a communication channel in which user questions will be sent to UKSA orbital analysts who will then provide them with bespoke answers and detailed information.
  • In addition, a newsletter will be produced for all new releases to ensure that all users and operations staff are kept up-to-date.

They’re working with colleagues in operations to understand how changes to the online part of the service will affect offline channels, and vice versa

  • We are working with the Orbital Analysts team at Raytheon NORSS to understand the impact of MSH on analyst workflows, but most of these services are run online already.
  • Satellite operators can now submit data and post MVP will be able to send messages to the UKSA SST team via Monitor Space Hazards. This should replace other channels (phone calls, emails) and enable users to contain all information in one place.
  • We have also deploted a ‘Contact an analyst’ feature which allows operators to contact an UKSA analyst about MSH.

Plans to increase digital take up do not involve making it more difficult to find details of phone, paper or face to face channels

  • Part of the purpose of the service is to make communication channels more easily accessible - at the moment, phone, paper and face to face channels for satellite operators to communicate with each other and analysts are not very strong. We will not make this any more difficult.

Providing a joined up experience across different channels

  • In general, our user research shows the online system is significantly better than the old offline system.
  • The new system doesn’t remove any functionality from the offline one but only improves it, so there should be no circumstances in which there is slippage between channels.
  • The old email/ call system will work as part of disaster recovery planning, though it will be improved: we have developed better relationships with our operators as part of building MSH.
  • UKSA, Orbital Analyst, and Supplier staff have always been making joint decisions about prioritisation and attending user research sessions.
This page was last reviewed on 8 December 2022. It needs to be reviewed again on 8 June 2023 .
This page was set to be reviewed before 8 June 2023. This might mean the content is out of date.