Sixth sprint for the Digital Housing Needs project

Sarah Piercy, Tuesday 23 August 2022

Sprint 6 is done and dusted and we made considerable progress while keeping our cool during the hottest sprint in living memory!

Here’s what we did as part of sprint 6:

First Contact and Web Content Design

User interview planning

Completed and signed off all data protection governance tasks
Continued to process new service user sign-ups for the user research
Spoke to the Policy team about coordination around setting up face to face interviews with service users at Redbridge hostels, as part of the web content research
Arranged and carried out three remote user interviews with residents currently in temporary accommodation, within the Redbridge Foyer and within self-contained temporary accommodation

Social media research

We’ve started to collate our customer housing queries on social media, using public posts and direct messages. This is part of our ongoing qualitative research for First Contact and includes queries for all our housing teams
We’ve found that residents typically post on social media to get a quick resolution to a query or to get our attention

Content design

We’ve started work on the homelessness and rough sleeper pages and decided to have two separate pages as there are two distinct set of user needs
We completed the first draft of the Duty to Refer page

Duty to Refer webpage

The page should address the user need: ”As a public authority agency such as a prison or hospital, I need to know how to make a referral for someone who is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless under the ‘duty to refer’ to Redbridge Borough Council.”
The new page has a Hemingway readability score of Grade 6 or ‘very good’
This readability score is based on the lowest US education level (grade) to understand the writing. US grade 6 is equivalent to UK year 7
Although the Hemmingway tool is not entirely flawless, it’s a good starting point that helps us ensure that the content is clear and simple
The page also has clear headings and related links

Rough Sleeper pathway service redesign kick off for commissioning procurement. We are developing a template to use for future procurements, and this is a high-profile procurement for Redbridge
We reviewed metrics and data requirements as part of commissioning piece, and we have contacted partners to arrange some time in September 2022 to look at the revised Rough Sleeper web content

Accessing Temporary Accommodation

We met with the Interim Head of Housing Needs and the Head of Housing Management to review requirements for the actions from the Temporary Accommodation workshop, which was held in July 2022
During the discussion, we referred to the time critical requirements for the Rough Sleeper pathway and agreed to place activities for Accessing Temporary Accommodation workshop on hold, until mid-September 2022

Our planned activities for the next sprint are:

User research

We will look into arranging more face-to-face interviews with service users at the Redbridge hostels
We will continue to arrange and carry out more remote interviews with service users
Our goal this sprint is to complete the qualitative social media research

Content design

The sprint goal is to complete the first draft of the homelessness and rough sleeper pages which we can review and share with stakeholders and partners
We need to get ‘sign off’ on the Duty to Refer content from stakeholders, to make sure that the content is factually correct
The inaugural meeting with colleagues in Digital and IT Teams will be held this sprint, to collaboratively discuss the corporate website developments

Rough Sleeper Pathway

We are working collaboratively as one multi-disciplinary team with the Rough Sleeper operational and data team and being intentional about embedding agile principles into our ways of working
To progress the commissioning procurement, we will create an initial backlog of specific and actionable tasks for this sprint
Our goal this sprint is to develop a first draft of the commissioning procurement specification and associated documentation

The next Digital Housing Needs show and tell is planned for Tuesday 30 August. Please come armed with questions!

For more information about the Digital Housing Needs programme, get in touch with us via Twitter @lbrdigitalvoice  

Previous sprint notes:  