Helping claimants declare their capital
Client
Universal Credit (DWP)
Year
2022
Tasks
User Experience
User Interface
User Testing
Prototyping
Details
The Universal Credit department needs claimants to tell them about the capital (such as savings, investments, property, etc) that they have throughout their claim journey as it affects the amount of Universal Credit they will receive. The more capital a claimant has the less they are entitled to.
The current process used to find out about and verify claimant capital was confusing for claimants and resulted in a high number of fraud and error cases. I was asked to create a journey that would encourage more accurate reporting of capital as well as help Universal Credit agents with the verification process.
Discovery phase
Initially we held talks with agents and claimants to understand their frustrations with the current process. Some of the key findings showed that claimants’ mental model of capital was different from that of Universal Credit.
This lead to claimants unintentionally committing fraud because they were not aware of their obligation to inform certain types of capital to the department.
During the feature kick-off workshop we held a whiteboarding session for participants to brainstorm lots of different solutions for us to potentially take into design and test at the next stage.
We also grouped what success measures and specific metrics we could use to monitor whether the feature was having the desired effect.
Proposed new flow
User testing
I worked closely with the user researcher to establish the hypothesis and goals of the research. We did a first round of usability testing sessions with seven participants to find out if any of the proposed flows made it easier for claimants to declare the correct amount of capital.
We then analysed the findings, presented them back to the team and adjusted the design. A second round of testing was done with eight participants to refine the solution.
Key improvements
Adding a check box list for types of savings, which flow to specific amount questions. This is to make claimants more accountable for their decisions.
Collecting specific amounts and removing the £0-6k, £6-16k, £16+k categories. We ask claimants for amounts and then determine what affects/doesn’t affect the entitlement.
Changing wording from ‘Capital’ to ‘Savings’ to improve understanding
Ability to add multiple bank accounts
Ability to add second homes
Agent verification process
We redesigned the Agent verification process to include the new data points coming from the claimant’s declaration. This was also a change to improve existing pain points along the journey.
From a claimants’ point of view, there was no clear guidance on the specific type of evidence they should bring to the interviews. This meant Agents had to schedule additional calls and meetings to clarify the capital declared.
Agent Quote
“The capital breakdown will help enormously. Great step that the todo is listing exactly the evidence that the Case Manager needs to ask for.”
Capital verification form - Key improvements
Table showing breakdown of claimant’s capital declaration
Types of proof section is tailored to what the claimant has declared
Ditched the Digiman (Json) in order to capture input data.
This data was then used to provide the right outcome at the end of the to-do
