Working in the beta phase
As a content designer working in the beta phase, you’ll be working with developers to build whilst continuing to iterate the service. You’ll then focus on how the users interact with and experience the built service.
The team will be much the same as it was in alpha, although there will be more developers, quality and assurance testers and, hopefully, a performance analyst.
There might be periods where you’re waiting for developers to build and test parts of the service. While this happens, it’s a good time to review your documentation, translations and content strategy (if you have one).
What is the beta phase?
The beta phase is where you take your best idea from alpha and start building it for real. It also involves thinking about how your service will integrate with (or start to replace) existing services and preparing for the transition to live.
You’ll start out in ‘private beta’. This involves inviting a limited number of people to use your service to get feedback and improve it.
Once you’ve improved the service and are confident you can run it at scale, you take an assessment to move into ‘public beta’. This involves opening up your service to anyone who needs it.
Read how the beta phase works (GOV.UK) for more information.
Beta focus
You’re helping to get the prototype built and tested with users.
Who you work with on a private beta team
In the beta phase, your team may include:
- interaction designers
- user researchers
- service designers
- product managers
- delivery managers
- business analysts
- developers
- quality assurance (QA) testers
- performance analysts
- tech lead
As a service content designer in beta, you also need to keep in close contact with the content designer in the BAU team who works on the GOV.UK guidance for this area. Contact them by messaging on the #content slack channel.
They can help you with background, policy contacts and will be the team you’ll need to work with if you need any GOV.UK guidance page updates.
How content designers contribute to a beta phase
In the beta phase, you’ll initially help the developers to build your prototype. This might involve:
- giving your copydecks with error messages over to the developers
- working with developers to check the error messages you’ve written
- checking the prototype against what they’ve built – everyone is human, typos can slip in!
- negotiating design decisions based on what the developers say is possible to build
- explaining logic to the developers if you have a complicated user journey in the service
You’re not responsible for all of this, but you’ll also be:
- checking that what is being built is accessible
- one of the main points of contact with policy and communications subject matter experts (SMEs)
- leading show and tells to share progress
Once the service is built, you’ll begin testing with a small number of users. Your tasks will then be like the alpha phase. You will:
- observe how users interact with the service
- work with your colleagues to iterate screens and user journeys
- check analytics and direct feedback from quality and assurance (QA) testing
- focus on the end-to-end experience, including other online and offline interactions – for example, GOV.UK guidance, account login and email notifications
- maintain and update your service-specific style guide or glossary
Your service might need more than one user to complete different parts – for example, an exporter and a vet need to complete separate parts of the same export health certificate.
You’ll want to pay close attention to how the first user finishes what they need to do and how the second user picks up where they left off.