Welcome to the TC Design space! Here you will find lots of information about User Experience (UX) research and design principles in the context of the Transport Canada (TC) environment. Keep in mind that most of the information covered here is high-level overview information and not all principles apply to every single situation. This page is meant to encourage user-centred design so we remember that we are designing for our users, not ourselves.

The goals of the knowledge base are to improve onboarding when new designers join the organization, provide templates, tools, and processes to designers to facilitate and improve the UX practice, provide tips and tools for development teams that might not have a dedicated UX designer, and to give stakeholders an insight into the UX practice so that they know what to expect when working with a designer.

What is UX?

What does it mean to say that something is usable? What is User Experience?

There are many opinions on the definition of the word ‘usability’, but the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) did us all a favour and came up with an exceptional definition:

“The extent to which a product can be used by SPECIFIED USERS to achieve SPECIFIED GOALS with EFFECTIVENESS, EFFICIENCY and SATISFACTION in a specified CONTEXT OF USE.”

We can break each of these components down a bit further:

• Effectiveness – the degree to which a product, service, or system enables someone to achieve their goals

• Efficiency – is usually measured by speed and error rate

• Satisfaction – a user’s response, perceptions, and opinions of the experience

• Context of use – the environment the user is in, device they are using, time of day, inside or outside, etc.

A User Experience is made up of all tangible and intangible aspects of interacting with an organization. A user experience may be as quick as a few seconds, or can extend over years, but the principles remain the same.

Why do we need UX research and design?

The easiest answer to this question is empathy. As designers, we want to be mindful of how our users interact with the products and systems that we design and to ensure they have a positive experience. But UX also has business and strategic advantages. For public service, UX is the transparent liaison between the business (legislation, initiatives, programs, etc.) and the end-user, whether that is the general public, or government employees. For the public, good UX allows for the message sent by the business to be received, as intended, by the users. For employees, good UX allows the users to perform their duties with “effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction”.

The true merit in UX principles is that they ultimately replace opinion-based decision making with research-based decision making. UX design principles and research methods are based on cognitive and behavioural psychology research theories and methods and combined with measurable heuristics such as usability testing, user feedback surveys, baseline statistics, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The foundation of UX principles is based on actual data, and not just opinions.