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“Cogworx has played an integral part in the HMCTS ‘Reply to a jury summons’ service journey, having been with us from the very beginning and their knowledge and experience in delivering digital services has been invaluable. Working as part of the wider HMCTS project Team through every phase of the project from Discovery, GDS assessments and beyond they have become a trusted partner.”
Janet Healey
Principal Product Manager, HMCTS
HMCTS has worked on a number of projects with Cogworx. They have consistently delivered an essential customer-focused perspective to the delivery and operation of change programmes
Human-centred design
All good design starts with good people. Whether we're exploring a problem space, testing solutions or supporting a live service, our thinking centres around the human need.
HMCTS has worked on a number of projects with Cogworx. They have consistently delivered an essential customer-focused perspective to the delivery and operation of change programmes
Human-centred design
All good design starts with good people. Whether we're exploring a problem space, testing solutions or supporting a live service, our thinking centres around the human need.
Say Hello.
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Understanding the problem
Every year, approx. 355,000 people are summoned to serve on a jury at a Crown Court in England or Wales. Serving on a jury is a civic and legal duty for citizens between 18 and 76 years old.
The jury summonsing process was entirely paper-based, inefficient, inaccessible and carried a cost that was not sustainable.
The team undertook an 8-week discovery to understand the end to end service, from the request from courts for jurors to the issuing of expenses and post-trial support for jurors. During this time, we:
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Ran workshops with staff and stakeholders
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Conducted ethnographic research at the Jury Central Summoning Bureau (JCSB), observing staff answering calls to understand pain points and opportunities
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Logged and categorised calls from citizens for analysis
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Interviewed and issued questionnaires to serving jurors at Crown Courts to learn about their experiences
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Engaged with senior HMCTS stakeholders to ensure business needs were being considered
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Created experience maps, process maps and user journeys to record and articulate our findings
A paper challenge
The Jury Central Summoning Bureau received approx. 200k paper forms each year, that would move around the office in bundles of 20 forms as they were processed.
Testing ideas for usability, accessibility and feasibility
We took the learnings from discovery and began to develop potential solutions that would address the user needs and business requirements.
During this time, we:
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Ran design workshops and reviews with stakeholders
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Created prototypes from lo to high fidelity, using Sketch, InVision and, later on, coded interactive prototypes
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Conducted usability testing with citizens and staff both in labs, remotely and in the field
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Tested our work with people with access needs. We tested our designs and, later on, tested coded prototypes with assistive technologies
Alongside testing the newly developed digital service, we tested the wider service touchpoints including the paper summons pack, the paper reply form and guidance leaflets for Expenses and Loss of Earnings claims.
During Beta, we worked closely with our development partner, CGI, to implement the designs. We launched the private beta at two Crown Courts, making the digital service available to citizens who were summoned to these courts over a 3 month period. We;
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Tested coded prototypes with users, feeding findings into the product backlog
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Iterated the design of both the public-facing side of the service and the staff-facing processing capability
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Prepared for taking the service into private beta, ensuring feedback and measurement frameworks were in place
Designing an accessible service
Making good use of Cogworx’s network of accessibility testers, we tested our designs with a wide range of technologies, hardware and disabilities.
Taking the service into the ‘wild’ and testing our work
During private beta, we had a mixed methods research strategy aimed at getting the richest picture we could as to how the service worked ‘in real life’. We launched the service using two Crown Courts that were most similar in size and trial regularity. One adopted the digital service alongside the paper, and one didn’t - this one acted as our control court.
We tracked calls coming into JCSB for comments, complaints or support requests. We went to court to interview those who had come through the service and were now serving as jurors to understand how they found the experience. We added a paper insert to the summons pack, asking for feedback if someone decided to continue with the paper service rather than digital, helping to understand barriers to adoption.
Analytics and service data was pulled into a Performance Framework, allowing us to see how often, how easily and how quickly the service was fulfilling the needs of users and the business. We reported this data to HMCTS stakeholders, to the GDS performance dashboard and to wider HMCTS delivery colleagues.
We continued to take the service out on the road, testing in particular with those who had intermittent access to the internet (e.g. connectivity issues in the Welsh valleys) and with those who had access needs or needed support using the service.
After a successful private beta and service assessment, the service was rolled out as a public Beta to all courts over a 6-month period.
Since then, we have continued to develop the service based on user feedback, changing legislative or policy requirements, business needs or even macro events such as COVID-19 and EU Exit.
As the country went into lockdown in 2020, we attended our first ever remote service assessment to take the service into ‘Live’, which achieved a Met.
The team continues to support the service, looking for opportunities to further enhance the user experience, business efficiencies and to introduce the latest technologies.
Services
Service Design
Interaction Design
Content Design
User Research
Performance Analytics
Sectors
Government
Judicial services
Client
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
Partners
CGI
Digitising the jury summoning experience
Creating an accessible service for those summoned for jury duty
The Challenge
Design and develop an accessible digital service enabling citizens to respond to their jury summons. Make use of design thinking and modern technology to reduce overheads and introduce business benefits.
The Outcome
We delivered channel agnostic service design that has supported over 1 million summons replies since 2019. Over 650k of these have been received via the new digital service, with 280k of these being auto-processed requiring no staff intervention. The service consistently receives a 85-90% ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Very satisfied’ user satisfaction rating.