What’s new? 

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of the Service Manual for Wales is now live on our website! 

This manual aims to support the Digital Service Standard for Wales, providing guidance for everyone involved in creating public services in Wales to run better services. 

Why a service manual? 

The Service Manual is designed to be used alongside established resources to help you design, build, and deliver effective public services in Wales that meet the Digital Service Standard for Wales. 

While there are valuable resources available for designing and building digital products and services (e.g. the GOV.UK Service Manual), specific challenges in Wales require tailored support. We identified the need for guidance addressing delivering services in Wales, particularly for Welsh-language users. 

Our Service Manual fills that gap, providing relevant and actionable guidance, and currently focuses on 2 main areas: 

  • supporting the delivery of bilingual services 
  • addressing the unique challenges specific to the Welsh context 

We provide initial guidance on the basics of bilingual user research, getting your team ready, and planning research with Welsh-language users. 

How we developed it 

Research collaboration 

We worked closely with the User Research in Wales Community to co-design information about conducting research with Welsh-language users. Our goal was to understand the guidance users needed from the service manual and how they could effectively navigate the guidance. 

Our collaboration involved: 

  • engaging with user researchers of different experience levels 
  • understanding their experience in bilingual user research 
  • gathering feedback throughout the development process 

This input helped us refine our guidance, making sure it’s valuable and relevant for addressing the challenges user researchers face. 

We also focused on understanding how effectively users can complete tasks related to the information architecture and overall guidance.  

The feedback we received, from discovery through beta, has been essential in refining the manual, making it relevant, useful and comprehensive for those trying to conduct user research with Welsh-language users. 

Design process 

Our delivery team includes a service designer, interaction designer, and content designers alongside a user researcher. Working together, they developed a working prototype to test with users and iterate it from usability testing feedback to hone the information architecture and layout. 

We also facilitated a range of workshops and design and content critiques within the CDPS community. This open approach allowed us to share our progress, ensuring clarity, readability, and accessibility. 

You can learn more about what we did on: 

Tell us what you think! 

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the Service Manual. Your feedback is key to refining our guidance and making it even more useful.  

Share your experience: what was useful, what you liked, if something needs more clarity. 

You can provide feedback using the form in the Service Manual or send your thoughts directly to standards@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales.