Blog post: How we helped users find out if they can do something
Lucinda Pierce, content designer, shares how she, Laura and Sam created a way for user to quickly check if they are allowed to do a thing - or need to get permission.
People often want to do things like hold running events, go foraging, do surveys or filming on land NRW manages. They must often - but not always - apply to us for permission beforehand. This is to make sure the environment, species and people are protected from harm.
We wanted to simplify the application process to make it easier for users to give us the right information. But during discovery, we found a different problem to explore - that many users didn’t know if they needed to apply to us in the first place.
The problems
‘Position statements’ had been published on the website some years ago. They attempted to explain to both staff and users what was, and wasn’t, allowed. They were lengthy, difficult to understand and not written with the user in mind.
During research interviews, users said they had to wade through a lot of information that wasn’t relevant to the task they wanted to carry out. One described it as “telling me more about NRW than I need to know.”
Our desk research findings backed this up. We watched recordings of mobile users arriving at the position statement page, scanning the content, moving to other pages then exiting on the general enquiries page.
When we looked at enquiries to the customer hub, users were asking things like:
- Am I allowed to take fallen wood for firewood?
- Am I allowed to offer canoeing training?
- Can I go metal detecting in the forest?
- Can I camp on your land?
We could also see from the data on completed applications that people were applying when they didn’t need to.
How we fixed the problems
We removed the position statements from the website. From now on, they were to be used by only staff.
We used our form builder to create a user-led check service. We tied it into a simple start page. 
We take users down different routes, depending on their answers.
By answering a couple of questions users can find out if they:
- can something without applying for permission
- can do something only if they get permission
- aren’t allowed to do something
If they need to apply for permission, the service links the user to the right place on our website. If they can’t do something, we tell them why.
We added seventeen activities to the service, based on what we knew users were looking for.
It took some work to get clarity on the rules for each activity as it could depend on location, how many people were involved and whether people were being charged to take part.
It looks simple on the outside as the routing complexity is hidden from the user - they only experience the route they have chosen to take.
Outcomes
- Over 2,200 searches were made between May 2023 and October 2024
- We designed for mobile first with over 80% of user searches on mobile
- This is self service: users do not have to give their name or contact details to get an answer so we are not capturing and storing personal data that we do not need
- Users are given an onward journey to advice or the application, if it applies to them
- We add activities based on evidence of user need - recently adding ‘weddings, and ‘scattering ashes’, for example
- We pair wrote the content so that the Welsh is as clear as the English
- Our assumption is that fewer users now use the application process to check if they need permission
Next steps
We’ll be exploring whether to use this pattern in other services where there is evidence users need help to make a decision.
We know how many checks are made, but we have no precise way of understanding the impact this has on teams' workload. We are involved in meetings to discuss how impact of service improvements can be measured.