Transparency

Why it's important

Be transparent with how you decide to improve and change your product or service. This instills trust in your users and stakeholders. They will be confident you're designing secure, customer-centric digital things.

Comply with rules

NSW Government is committed to the principles of transparency. Agencies must comply with whole of government policies and laws. These include:

• NSW Customer Commitments: Explain to customers what to expect. Engage the community.
• Open Data Policy: Make data open by default, unless there's an overriding public interest against doing so.
• Government Information (Public Access) Act: Understand and comply with your responsibility to make information public.
• Data Sharing (Government Sector) Act: Share data properly between your agency and the Data Analytics Centre.

Be open about decision making and share findings

Be open with your team, NSW Government agencies and your customers. Let them know how you make decisions in the design and delivery of your products and services. Transparency is a key driver in customer satisfaction.

Share what you're doing, when you're doing it unless there's a good reason not to do so. For example, you would not share information that contains personal or sensitive information.

Create an open space in your office. Use it to display and promote what you're doing through your project phases.

You can share things like:

• user research artefacts
• learnings and insights from usability testing
• rationale and ideas
• wire frames and prototypes
• data
• code
• iterations of designs
• case studies
• solutions, outputs and learnings to the Design System community.

Share your customers' data with other teams working to improve the customer experience. Always make sure you get customer consent first. Have the necessary contracts or agreements in place to allow you to share intellectual property artefacts. These include insights, code and graphics.

Develop case studies

Develop case studies that showcase innovative ways of solving customers' pain points.

Be open about any failures or challenges. Share what worked and didn't to raise awareness and capability in different ways of working.

Create feedback and engagement opportunities

Give your colleagues and customers a way to engage with your work and to tell you what they think. Include practices in your workflow practices such as:

• getting the 'thing' in users' hands
• publishing a blog for comment
• holding meetups or showcases.

Provide consistent, easy and meaningful opportunities for customers to engage with you. The way you engage with them is a marker of good customer experience and their trust in your services.

Make sure you respond to their feedback. Explain why you are using it, or not. This helps them understand the reason behind decisions.