Challenge

When lockdown was announced in March 2020, applications to Scotland’s Land Register halted as paper applications based on the legal requirement for a pen and ink deed signature could no longer be scanned and processed by RoS staff due to the requirement to stay at home and avoid transmission of the virus.

The effects of the lockdown were that no applications could be progressed within an Organisation that had successfully settled and continuously updated Scotland’s Land Register since it’s earliest incarnation (the Sasine Register) for over 400 years – through two World Wars and multiple financial crashes.

In Scotland, for the first time since the creation of the world’s oldest land register in XX1617XX (the Sasine register) Citizens could not transact on and register their property transactions from house purchases or sales, adding or removing mortgages, to commercial property transactions and leases along with many other services RoS provides.

The race was on to find a way to re-open the Register and enable transactions to restart for the Citizens of Scotland, with many of their Solicitors similarly encamped at home, requiring to progress house sales, business transactions, mortgages and re-mortgages all whilst battling their own logistical obstacles to be able to adapt and work from home.

When it’s unclear what to build, what do you do first? Research to create more certainty.

And so it began…

Setting up initial exploratory research & sketching ideas

Given the recruitment can often take longer than the research, the urgent task was to identify and ensure a representative set of users through interrogating business data and leveraging knowledge of the CRM Team to establish a range of candidate firms that submit cases to the Land Register, covering a broad range of specialisms, including Residential and Commercial conveyancing as well as a range of sizes and geographic locations across Scotland.

Invites were sent, and volunteers started coming forward. At the same time I began to review the existing application form, considering it alongside some ideas for a potential user flow and potential digital ideas for translating the existing legislative questions into a digital UI in Sketch and Miro largely based off the Gov UK Design System and GDS principles.

Surveying the landscape – seeking insight in a rapidly changing situation

As you likely recall, many of us were suddenly at home in 2020 and trying to cobble together ways to work on new computer setups, unable to do something we previously could and able to do things we previously couldn’t (Zoom calls and quizzes) all the while commandeering dining tables, working in houseshares and many other unique temporary and evolving combinations of circumstance.

To try and fill in the huge blanks and holes in our knowledge about how our customers were potentially adapting (or not) to make things work I drafted a first version of a survey to help us understand much more of the context of what our Customers were experiencing, the capabilities they had at home and issues they were facing that might impact any potential solution we would put in place. Through reviews with two colleagues we arrived at a final version and set it up in SurveyMonkey to send to our customers and promote on social media channels, as well as from industry partners like the Law Society of Scotland.

Initial exploratory customer interviews

At this stage we began customer interviews with many of the volunteers that had come forward (still ensuring we kept within a broad range of Firms to avoid bias or skewed data). These early interviews involved two sections, the first to gather qualitative informations about how Customers were currently working at home, both their personal setup and the Firms current and evolving adaptations they were making to ensure business continuity.

Secondly, to gather feedback on potential high-level journey flow and evaluate static mocks, as well as exploring the information required to register a property and in relation to the flow and sequence of information, which party or side of the transaction has what detail and when, the triggers for certain actions and the current pains and issues with the existing process and form.

The aims and outcomes of these sessions were:

• A deeper understanding of the adaptations being made, pains and positives of the at home setups
• An understanding of the different Parties and ‘sides’ of a transaction
• User feedback on an outline for a potential journey flow, also gathering input on the architecture of the journey and sequence Customers expected vs. existing and proposed.
• Any pains in the current journey

Key learnings from this stage included:

• A technical limitation that users could only submit applications drafted and created by their Firm would make the service fundamentally unviable due to the way applications are often passed between firms for one submitting party to send to RoS together. This was changed within two sessions as a result of these learnings.
• Rich insights on ways of working, tech available (or not) at home upon which solicitors had previously relied, including detail about experimental scanning attempts using phone apps, difficulties they might have in providing copies of documents they would normally have to provide. These were all useful for shaping the future enhancements and backlog of features and improvements to come.
• Logistical and practical difficulties around Deed examination, sharing accessing and examining documents at home for many who had spent their careers used to evaluating physical documents in person in the office, upending many ongstadning processes and ways of working.
• [CUSTOMERS DROVE US HERE]

Round 2 – Prototyping and testing a form

Based on the initial insights I further revised the prototype flow and started to create Axure based mocks of the journey continually iterating on the learnings as they came in, making key or critical changes as soon as we had multiple confirmations sources indicating it was required.

To continue to test proposed design for viability and seek to de-risk and remove the likelihood for surprises I then set up a further round of application testing with Solicitors who had outstanding applications that were currently stuck in limbo due to the closure of the Register. Rather than create test scenarios, I asked customers to bring cases they were waiting to submit to the session to avoid the risk of a test inadvertently fitting to a naturally more tidy scenario (The real world is always messier than you think).

We progressed a second round at pace, key learnings from this process were:
– Modified sequence of events and actions
– Validating intended flow
– Capturing more context from Customers as the ways of working at home continued to evolve
– Gathering detail around less typical, complex and edge case scenarios we would need to cater for, helping inform future research topics and the backlog
– Captuing questions and feedback Customer had to help shape future guidance in service and across touchpoints like Customer Services, the RoS Wiki and Knowledgebase guidance.

Round 3 – Moving to a development environment

On XXth, March 2020 in Alpha user testing I observed an experienced Senior Solicitor Customer who had used the Sasine Register throughout their career use the submission service to successfully digitally submit the first case to the Sasines Register in it’s then 402 year old history. The meaning of the moment was not lost on either of us. I wonder what the founders in 1618 would have made of this.

– Round 1 and 2 of testing.

Moving to live Beta and working on enhancements and additional service functionality

At this point we We know this was purely a candidate for discussion and improvement but since we were going to work fast, it was better to start with something.

Include:
– Reviewing the existing form / but not wanting to just replicate or miss opportunities for improvement
– Outlining static mocks (in Sketch or Miro?)
– Recruiting participants (tracking in confluence shared for visibility and immediate status access across the project for rapid reporting across the business)
– Survey Design to understand how people were adapting and the challenges they were facing, context of environment they were finding themself in.
– Exploratory research (ways of working/home environment & understanding their expected sequence or logical flow)

Static prototyping sessions

Include:
– Reviewing the existing form / but not wanting to just replicate or miss opportunities for improvement
– Outlining static mocks (in Sketch or Miro?)
– Recruiting participants (tracking in confluence shared for visibility and immediate status access across the project for rapid reporting across the business)
– Survey Design to understand how people were adapting and the challenges they were facing, context of environment they were finding themself in.
– Exploratory research (ways of working/home environment & understanding their expected sequence or logical flow)
– Customer driving us to use the prototype (as they couldn’t get hands on yet)

Planning accelerated usability testing

Include:
– Asking customers to bring cases they were awaiting submission to avoid inadvertently fitting to a naturally more tidy scenario. (The real world is always messier than you think)
– Round 1 and 2 of testing

XXXXXX

Identifying colleagues with different case work or challenging scenarios that would be enhanced and supported through future increments