DIGITAL & STRATEGIC
UX DESIGN PRACTICE
SERVICE DESIGN
Supporting decarbonisation policy in the UK
Reducing barriers to information sharing to support decarbonisation.
In 2018, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced the Industrial Clusters Mission, setting out the ambition to create a net zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040. An industrial cluster is a regional grouping of industrial businesses and local authorities.
It was identified that there are numerous barriers to information sharing which prevent the industry from taking action to decarbonise. We saw the opportunity to ask how might we reduce barriers to information sharing to better support UK industry to engage with the Industrial Clusters Mission and decarbonisation policy more broadly? Could a digital solution potentially resolve these issues?
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The proposed digital services came with a series of recommendations, including a strategy that focused on user needs, end-to-end user journeys, motivations and goals. Alongside user stories, we outlined benefits and constraints for each of the concepts. A timeline and digital team were also proposed for BEIS to take the concepts forward to the Alpha phase.
The user research brought multiple insights about the industrial clusters that increased BEIS’ knowledge of the area. In the end, this Discovery process reinforced our understanding that the application of digital methodologies, such as prioritising user needs and developing personas and user journeys, have immense potential benefits to informing future policy decision making.
A multidisciplinary team from Arup worked with (BEIS) on a Discovery phase to understand the barriers and unmet needs surrounding information sharing and industrial decarbonisation. The 8-week discovery phase used the Government Digital Service (GDS) Agile Project Management framework.
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Arup applied a four phased user experience approach comprising: 1. framing, 2. user research, 3. synthesis and 4. conceptualisation. This framework gave Arup the ability to be adaptive with the approach as Arup learned more about the complex nature of the problem.
- The framing phase consisted of a literature review of key BEIS documents and a technology review of the current BEIS digital landscape across people, process and technology
- User research involved engagement with a diverse group of stakeholders within and outside government, including cluster-based organisations and centralised bodies. A user needs workshop was also conducted with BEIS and cluster members which focused on exploring cluster-to-cluster communication and the co-creation of concepts
- During synthesis, the team analysed the findings gathered in the workshop and stakeholder interviews, which were used to create a series of cluster profiles and network maps
- Conceptualisation took the insights gathered and moved into concept generation. Personas were developed as well as project lifecycles and concepts to take into the Alpha phase.
Through user research, it was found that industrial clusters had ambitions to increase the sharing of information across best practice, operational experience and commercial frameworks. The increased collaboration would aid the decarbonisation efforts, reduce risk, increase efficiency and have financial benefits.
However, it was also found that the landscape was complex and deploying a digital service would not be an instantaneous solution. Owing to the complexity of clusters that each vary in maturity, governance structures, and levels of collaboration, a digital service would only work with clear leadership, ownership and a strategy to ensure the whole problem was being solved for the user.
From the evidence gathered, the team proposed two potential digital services that could support engagement with the Industrial Clusters Mission and decarbonisation policies more broadly.
In addition to the digital concepts proposed, the user research brought multiple insights about the industrial clusters that increased BEIS’ knowledge of the area.