Kamer van Koophandel
Supporting scrum teams with UX
De Kamer van Koophandel (KvK) is the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. It keeps track of all companies and organisations that are situated in The Netherland in the public trade register. I also provides information and advice to entrepreneurs in areas such as legislation, exports, innovation or finance.In my seven years of Dept I regularly helped the KvK out with interaction and UX design for their public website.
I worked on many versions of the website of the KvK from 2011 up until 2016. Before 2014 it was still an old website. In the beginning of 2014 the organisation drastically changed, which therefore needed a new website. Within 2 months we designed and developed an entire new website from scratch. After the first release, the website was continuously developed and improved.
I supported one of the scrum teams which was responsible for service, administration for the trader register and event parts of the KvK. This meant I had to learn a lot about legislation and business ruling that comes with it.
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Together with Ferry den Dopper I helped out introducing service design to the organisation. This holistic approach helped them to not only think in their separate channels (like digital), but improve the full service experience along the way.
My role
Junior / Medior UX Design (Dept)
Project type
Website, self-service for the public domain
Platform
Tridion
Visual Design
Armand Kruizinga, Curt Hoyer
Other UX
Ferry den Dopper
Simplifying registration for companies and organisations
One of the bigger cases I worked on related to the Dutch Trade Register. Each company and organisation situated in The Netherlands is obliged to register itself in the Dutch Trader Register. And the website facilitates a big part of this process. In the past it was very hard for people to find the right online or paper forms to use for registration or chance requests. I set to work on improving the design.
What was needed was more clarity and guidance, so people wouldn't get lost in the maze of scenario's and forms. I started structurering all the possible scenario's people could end up at. Next step was designing the tree like structure, so an easy step-by-step wizard could be designed. This wizard was then tested with real users through several iterations.
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User testing new concepts
New or improved functionalities for the website were tested with real entrepreneurs. Testing was important because some functionalities were crucial for the primary operational services of the organisation.
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For testing we used Invision prototypes and a simple tool called Lookback. Medium fidelity prototypes where used. We approached entrepreneurs that had an appointment the KvK, and asked 5 minutes of their time to participate while they were waiting for their appointment. This situation was ideal for us, since we could always check something with real users, without having to plan and schedule an entire day of user testing.
The KvK took interest in having a more holistic approach in order to provide better and more customer friendly services. Together with Ferry den Dopper we set up the first service design project to get them up to speed in service design thinking. The idea was to run one full service design program for on of their primary customer facing processes. Once they got the hang of it, they would do the same themselves for also other service processes.
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So, we held interviews with internal stakeholders, client facing employees and entrepreneurs to get insight on how the current process was organised and perceived. Once we got our insights, we plotted them on a customer experience map and organised ideation workshops with people on many different levels of the organistion. Together we came up with many micro-solutions that would improve the customer journey, process and service level across all touch points. All feasible ideas were then placed on a freshly designed service blueprint. This would then serve a starting point for multi-discipliner teams to start making improvements.
Getting the KvK up to speed on service design thinking
Looking back
In my many years at the KvK I designed many UX concepts. Some of those concepts were really beneficial to the organisation, some of them unfortunately never got developed. What I learned from it, is that you have to come up with a good plan in order to get things moving. Organisations like KvK are subject to legislation and politics, and that can make it somethings a bit frustrating if you want to move forward and get things done. All and all, I learned a lot during from my period of 5 years time there and it made me more skilled in good interaction, communications and concepting.