As their Customer Experience Intelligence Partner, we are assisting as they deliver the Second Generation Free Flow Charging Scheme for the Dart Charge. We're working towards project goals as part of a wider 30-50 year strategy for the UK's roads to "Connect the Country".
This ongoing partnership follows the successful delivery of our initial discovery phase and rapid prototyping designed to support the future vision for their service. During this time we've:
- gained a greater understanding of wider user needs
- informed service roadmaps
- prototyped proof of concepts.
We are also looking to the future and the impact of innovation, and introducing helpful success metrics and governance to stay on track.
But most importantly, we're fostering a real cultural shift towards user centred design and advocacy for the core GDS Principles and Government Service Standards. We ensure all of work is empowering and easily shareable to ensure its impact can reach outside of the project and inform future free flow charging schemes as well as wider Highways England stakeholders.
Our approach for the project has always been to think bigger than just digital. In Discovery, we found that the service was working, but by understanding user needs we could work towards greater compliance and building the beneficial ethos of the frictionless system. For these problem areas, we went beyond wireframes and digital designs, and looked at the “Lived Experience” and all user touchpoints. We worked to guarantee consistency and summon confidence in every user, whether an interaction occurs on the crossing or before they embark.
The beginning of our journey
Following our successful Discovery and rapid prototyping projects for the Second generation free flow charging service, we were brought on as their Customer Experience Intelligence Partner. The aim of this partnership is to improve compliance and safety, as well as generate a more effective, consistent experience across all of the Dart Charge's channels.
In addition to proof of concepts, revised service maps and the validated discovery phase, we are working towards consistent design principles, journey maps and a bespoke tone of voice. Our support will help design and deliver a service that will meet local, wider-UK and non-UK users’ needs in an inclusive, easy to use way.
We knew we needed a vision that transcended traditional UX practice to prioritise safety, enable us to consider the minutia of road-user behaviour, and deep dive into how humans read and engage while concentrating on driving. Our focus on this led us to actually drive the crossing to get first hand experience of all the real life factors. We knew that this is paramount to the understanding the service and could influence online behaviour, such as account creation, and interacting with the contact centre.
Highways England embedded Nomensa at every step and advocate not only for GDS principles, but also user centred design (UCD). This shift in working practices, will help drive future technology decisions based upon user and business needs not simply capability. We have also navigated policy, and built relationships conscientiously and openly. This empowers us and Highways England to really understand their users, stakeholders, suppliers and advocate for best practice.