I’m am funding a charity to develop a digital product / service and I want to make sure they do it right

• Does the charity show evidence of research directly with their user group to understand their needs? For example through 1-1 interviews with users, or undertaking shadowing or contextual research?  
• Do they have a plan to continue to engage with their intended service users over time, such as talking about conducting usability studies?

• User needs based on user research
• Personas
• Jobs to be done
• A research plan for ongoing usability testing

• User needs – the Government Digital Service has great guidance on identifying and writing up user needs
• 1:1 user research interviews – here’s a handy how-to for charities on NCVO
• Personas – there’s lot of guidance on the web, this is a helpful overview on Personas
• Jobs-to-be-done – this Harvard Business Review article a is useful introductory article, more practitioner-focused information can be found on these dedicated sites jtbd.info and jobstobedone.org  
• Usability testing – Nielsen Norman group have many good resources like this introduction, Steve Krugg has published two very helpful introductory books
• Contextual inquiry, or shadowing – there’s a good introduction here
• Form software such as Typeform or Google Forms can be helpful for signing up users for research and gathering short bits of information
• Acumen parted with IDEO.org to produce a free introductory course to human centred design – Acumen / IDEO Human-centred Design Course

• Has the charity shown evidence that they have looked both inside and outside of their sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that are trying to do something similar? Have they identified how their service is different to these?  
• Has the charity shown evidence that they’ve looked both inside and outside of my sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that are using a similar process or technology? Are they building with this, or have given a good reason why they need to build something new?  

• Market scan, competitor analysis or map of other services out there already doing something similar
• A business canvas showing how their product or service differs from what’s out there

• Alidade can help create a plan for finding technology tools that suit a social change project
• Charity Catalogue helps nonprofits easily and quickly discover the best online tools and resources
• Nesta’s DIY Toolkit has been designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results
• Squarespace, Tilda and Github pages can be useful for creating simple websites
• The Lean Canvas and Superhero Canvas can help a charity map out what’s unique about their service.  
• Tech trust marketplace gives charities tailored access to discounted software

Has the charity demonstrated they have appropriate skills to deliver the work:

• Do they have dedicated technical resource, whether in house or through an external agency?
• Do they have evidence senior management buy-in – for example a senior sponsor in the organisation?
• Do they have access to expertise in the social area they are working in?
• Are users represented, either through an ongoing plan for user research, or through their involvement directly in the work?

• Contracted teams of staff who are clear on the budget and timescale of their work.

• CAST and Neontribe’s Conversation menu can help guide conversations between charities and developers
• CITA’s Tech Surgeries can help support charities with IT queries
• Reach Volunteering can help connect charities with experts
• Super.global can help charities find agency partners
• DataKind can help charities connect with data scientists

• Is the team expressing awareness that the service proposition is likely to shift over time as they test and improve it with user feedback?  
• Have they identified key assumptions that they want to test over the life of the grant?
• Do they know about are are using techniques like Agile or Kanban to manage the development of the product or service?  

• A good system for tracking their development process, e.g. a Trello Kanban board
• Scheduled processes in the team’s diary, such as sprint planning meetings and sprint retrospectives
• A way to track their assumptions, such as a Knowledge Kanban

• Lean Startup and Agile processes to ensure they’re following a user-centred, iterative approach
• For tracking assumptions
  • Knowledge kanban
• Software management
  • Trello (you can create free boards)
  • Atlassian Jira
  • Pivotal Tracker
  • Airtable
  • The wall! (post-it notes and index cards)
  • Basecamp
  • Zoho projects
• Prototyping
  • Sketch
  • Balsamiq
  • Marvel
  • Invision

• Does the charity show evidence that they have mapped out how users will find their way to the new product or service, why they will come, and what they will get from interacting with the service?
• Does the charity have a sense of the user’s journey through their service, for example the steps a user will take?
• Has the charity thought about where the user will go after they finished with this product and what the charity needs to do to make their next step is as easy as possible?

• A competed flow of where the user is coming from, what steps they undertake while involved in the service, and where they go immediately afterwards

• Service Blueprints to map out both user, frontline and back office functions in a service
• User flows to understand steps through a specific service
• User journey maps to understand a user’s journey through a service, including things like their emotional state
• Google Analytics to track how users interact with the online components of the service, and where the drop-off points are

Is the charity committed to making the service accessible to users with different needs, for example:

• Working with assistive technologies
• Ensuring all online content meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)

• Tested the service with users with different needs
• Tested the service with assistive technologies

• GDS Guidance on testing with assistive technologies
• W3C accessibility standards
• Scope Accessibility Guidelines
• GDS content guidelines
• Some sample questions we’ve used at CAST to explore how a user uses technology
• Helpful GDS blog on including users with low digital skills in user research
• Posters of accessibility guidelines:
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)

• Is the charity following principles in GDPR, such as minimising the data that they are collecting?
• Is there evidence the charity has considered the security of its service and has a plan to maintain that security?

• Have a privacy policy
• Get all interviewees and testers to sign a research consent form
• Completed the Government’s Cyber Essentials checklist

• Centre for cyber security charity guidelines  
• The ODI’s data ethics canvas ensures any choices made about what data is collected and how it is used are not unfair, discriminatory or deceptive
• The Engine Room’s responsible data principles cover the most frequently-occurring data considerations they’ve encountered working with NGOs:
• NCVO data protection guidelines offer practical support around data protection
• Mozilla’s internet health report section on privacy and security

• Has the charity mapped out the likely ongoing cost of the service depending on its growth, including future technical development, marketing and staff support costs?
• Has the charity shown evidence that it has considered the lifecycle of the service, and when the service might need to change, or be retired, for example by considering it against the GDS stages of an agile project?

• An Agile roadmap and a rough budget based on required people and resource
• An ethical revenue generation model, so you have the money to evolve the product

• Agile roadmap. There’s some guidance here and here
• The Lean Canvas and Superhero Canvas
• St. Gallen business model navigator – a guide to the 55 business models you could use to generate revenue
• Market research document, if you’re using an off-the-shelf tool, check to see if they offer a charity discount. Some of these are listed on the tt-exchange

• Has the charity shown evidence that they have identified other organisations who are working to deliver a similar service or social outcome and how what they are proposing is different to that?  
• Have they shown evidence that they have engaged with relevant organisations to minimise the amount of duplication?

• A map of other organisations working in this space
• Meetings planned / taken place with other organisations
• An understanding from a user’s perspective how the different organisations / services they engage with interact

• Stakeholder mapping
• Github for using others’ code, or sharing your own
• Slack for collaborating both inside and outside your organisation
• Online communities of practice, like the Digital Charities Slack Channel

• Is the charity open to sharing their work, either with other organisations working in a similar area to get their feedback, or through open platforms like blogs?
• Is there evidence that they have explored open source technologies they could build on, or Creative Commons licenses they could use?
• Have they considered if the service they build could be open sourced so that other charities could use the technology?
• Have they considered how data from the service could be responsibly shared with other organisations in the sector?

• Blogs sharing their work and process
• A list of other organisations working in a similar space
• A space where they share their code

• 5 Star Open Data is a popular standard for open data
• Creative Commons licenses to make content reusable
• Github for sharing or accessing other’s code
• Online communities of practice, like Digital Charities Slack Channel, Charity Connect, the ECF Newsletter and others
• Speaking at Tech for Good and NetSquared meetups – find the nearest one here