We’ve written previously about the role of open data in organisational transparency and the Department for Transport’s (DfT) ambition to bring data providers together, making data more accessible to solve road-based challenges through a National Access Point (NAP).
We’ve been supporting the Department of Transport (DfT) to recognise what could be improved and introduced to provide the right digital infrastructure and enable easier access to the UK’s road transport data.
Meeting the different needs of potential users
Those in the transport community that would most immediately benefit from a new NAP work in central government, local authorities, the commercial sector and research. All of whom have a broad set of needs for a NAP and various levels of data literacy. It was clear that creating a data catalogue that effectively met the needs of all of these different types of users was going to be a challenge.
User-centred research
To help us understand each of these users, their challenges and how they would use and publish transport data, we looked at what each of them needed most from a NAP.
We spoke with a broad range of participants to grow our understanding of data publisher user journeys and how we might be able to improve data discoverability and metadata. Learning from users from over twenty organisations, we developed four personas to represent the full spectrum of potential users. These personas included varied levels of technical expertise with different goals, data tasks, motivations and challenges.
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