25-04-2012 09:38:00Digital Media

Response to online survey

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to complete the questionnaire about our website. Over 500 people have responded, providing us with some really good feedback.
The information is vital to help us re-design the Force website and we will be publishing a summary of the findings from your responses shortly.

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Neighbourhood policing teams consulted

 31-01-2012 13:02:00Digital Media

Consultation is continuing about the re-design of our website and the most recent part involved local policing teams.

The digital media team questioned them about how online communication and social media features within their roles and the neighbourhood policing websites.

These results will help the consultation process considerably and we feel several areas were particularly interesting:

Local policing teams and how they engage with their communities

An overwhelming number stated that the way they preferred to engage with their communities is face-to-face or via the telephone, ensuring a personal connection is made.  However many understand the importance of websites, email and social media to keep in touch with their communities and use it on a day-day basis alongside making personal contact.

Content of neighbourhood policing websites

Neighbourhood policing teams actively promote their neighbourhood sites in their communities.  They feel the information they include about contacting their local policing team, neighbourhood priorities and local meetings is relevant and appropriate for their communities and is included on their web pages.

Just over half (54%) of officers said their communities have reported crimes on line and antisocial behaviour is the main type of crime reported on line.

Social media

While some local policing teams are actively engaging social media, (Facebook being the most popular), others are a little more reluctant and felt that for their communities this wasn’t the best way of reaching them. 

How can local policing teams improve their website?

Local policing teams were asked to decide whether the ideas we had come up with to improve local policing sites would be useful to them. One suggestion of a list of non-policing priorities and who to contact to resolve them, for example, if there is an issue with dog fouling and local council contact numbers would be extremely useful. This will certainly be considered.

The consultation with this group has been very useful and allows the digital media team to understand firsthand how/what they use their websites for and this can only inform our re-design of the website.

The next step

The next stage in the process is to visit schools and look at the websites aimed at younger people – jnrspace.info (aimed at 6-10 years) and yrspace.info (aimed at 12-17 years).  Not only will we understand how these sites are used by young people but also how they are being accessed and where - at home or in schools. 

If you have used the sites above please email us your thoughts on how we could improve the site.

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BrowseAloud

 08-11-2011 08:25:00Digital Media

The force is completing an impact assessment on whether to renew the BrowseAloud contract, do you have any thoughts on there is a requirement for this?

Please read the below for a fuller explanation and email website messaging with your thoughts and ideas before 24 November 2011.
Thank you.

What is BrowseAloud?

BrowseAloud is a solution that allows users to have website content read to them aloud, by moving the cursor over text.

BrowseAloud is free to download for users who have control over the voice, word pronunciations and speech highlighting.

The user downloads a free, small browser plug-in. Once the plug-in has been installed, content on this site can be spoken aloud. BrowseAloud will read every webpage on the site and can also read pdfs in Adobe Reader Version 6.0 onwards.

The Force purchases a license to enable the BrowseAloud function on it’s external website. The renewal license for the next two years has been vigorously renegotiated and the lowest price has been reached.

Some thoughts after much consultation.

BrowseAloud is perhaps a little surplus now that technologies have moved on. In the current financial climate it is a significant expense that we must review especially as we are able to provide alternative free options, which offer the same type of service. Most users with visual assistance needs tend to use a system wide solution but we cannot ignore users who may not have such systems or simply cannot afford them. We want to ensure any free alternatives offer the same functionality.

The web team concentrates its efforts on W3C standards and works towards compliance. And ensure that this is built into the conceptualisation, design, development and implementation of our sites.

There are a mix of free alternatives to BrowseAloud which perform various functions and also payment plan versions of web plug in software which do the same job as ‘BrowseAloud’ but they are all expensive (and with budgets being slashed to the extent they are) it becomes even more crucial that we get value for money and ensure the function is now relevant and still needed.

If we do not renew BrowseAloud we will be able to offer links to these other alternatives:

• Jaws, a screen reader for Windows. A trial period demo is available.
• Lynx, a free text only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
• Links, a free text only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
• Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming. A free downloadable version is available.

We have consulted:

• The Force Equality & Diversity department
• The Force disability group
• The industry standard .net magazine
• Employees of The South West School and College for the Blind
• The students of St Loyes College.

Please email your views to website messaging by the 24 November.
Thank you

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Questionnaire responses.

 09-09-2011 13:20:00Digital Media

To all those who completed the online questionnaires a big thank you.
We went through all 38 responses, 5 returned PDFs and 33 completed the online form.

Below is a summary of what we have learnt:
That most of you who visit the site do so for work related reasons.
That most of you are hardened internet users and gain access from multiple platforms usually on a broadband connection and casually browse, check the news, shop, do research, stream content and in fact do most things the internet provides except play games!
That over half of you have a social media account the most popular being Facebook and then Twitter. Other social media sites mentioned were Stumble Upon, YouTube, Flickr, Linked in and myspace. The overwhelming majority of you however would like your online contact with the Police to be through the official website.
That over half of you using mobile phones would like the websites optimized for use with the mobile phone.
The majority of you thought that the site could be trusted and is well designed but that some of the content could be refreshed and be a little more dynamic. You would also like the news stories to be ‘written for public’.
Most of you hadn’t used the accessibility drop down but that those that did thought that it was easy to use. No problems were reported of user accessibility software having problems with browsing the site.

The things you liked were:

• ‘the graphic banners that take you to sections of the site’
• ‘Homepage has immediate access to news items’
• ‘Links to Local policing’
• ‘Layout is consistent throughout the site’
• ‘The aesthetic design is good, bright colours, modern and professional’

and one person on Twitter from Canada wrote

• ‘DC_Police great to see you have a handle and the web site is wonderfully laid out and easy to navigate around - #jobwelldone’

The things you disliked were:

• ‘Navigation structure not simple enough’
• ‘Accessibility bar displays for a second as page renders & then disappears – makes page jump.’
• ‘Information poorly arranged’
• ‘Left-nav-pull-out often closes before a selection is made’
• ‘There are many, many different pages within the site finding them can be difficult, the search facility isn’t particularly accurate.’

The reasons for your visit to the site were varied and in order of popularity were:

• News
• Local team information
• Contact information
• Crime figures
• Recruitment
• Traffic information
• Community messaging
• Bumblebee
• Freedom of Information request
• General information
• Specialist department information

To find this information you used (in order of popularity):

• Left-hand-navigation
• Home page icon
• Site search

Generally you found the information relevant but weren’t particularly in agreement when you were asked whether it was up-to-date or well written.
The new features that you’d like to see (from the list provided), in order of preference were

• Sign up register for email news and updates
• Login for news and local policing updates that are relevant to your postcode
• Ability to securely access details about the progress of your crime

The new features you suggested were:

• ‘INFORMATION ABOUT HOW THE CUT BACKS ARE EFFECTING THE FORCE GETTING TRUTHFUL UPDATES’
• ‘to keep up with things like billboard, achievements of officers and movements.’
• ‘where the Officers and PCSO have been in their duty time and why’
• ‘Clearly marked phone numbers, Police station addresses’

The Neighbourhood policing survey results

 (from 5 members of the public, questions appeared on the PDF only)
How frequently do you visit the site?

• A few times a year (3)
• Daily (1)
• Weekly (1)

Your feelings on the site were

• I can trust (3)
• Would talk to others about the site (2)
• Found site to be engaging (2)
• Well designed (1)
• Found site to be well written (1)

What you liked

• ‘Does what it says’
• ‘I can contact my local team.’
• ‘Too little content to form an opinion’
• ‘The principle idea is good - each neighbourhood team maintains their own site. This in theory would get the most relevant information 'out there'. But for some teams the novelty has worn off and looking at some dates on news articles etc, the novelty wore off some time ago. There are however some good examples of neighbourhood sites.’

What you disliked

• Very poor grammar, punctuation and attention to detail (in some, not all neighbourhoods). These things hugely influence the impression the user gets. This varies hugely from one neighbourhood to another. It seems that some authors type out their piece and haven't even read it.
• ‘Poorly arranged’
• ‘Sometimes not up to date’
• ‘Entered my postcode EX5 2TQ for PACT meeting displayed a page with "default" (as no content ?)’

The information you were looking for when you came to this site was:

• Contact my local team (2)
• Find out more information about my local team (2)
• Find out and / or report local priorities (1)

How you found the information?

• Site navigation (2)
• On site search (2)

Your views on the information were?

• The information was easy to find?
  (No response) 
• The information was relevant? 
  (3 agree, 1 neither, 1 strongly disagree)
• The information was well written?
  (1 agree, 2 neither, 2 strongly disagree)
• The information was up-to-date?
  (2 agree, 1 neither, 2 strongly disagree)

• The information met my needs?
  (2 agree, 3 neither)

Online crime reporting survey results

(from 5 members of the public, questions appeared on the PDF only)


Have/would you use the site to report a non-emergency crime?
Three responded yes, and two no.

What type of crime would you be happy to report / did you report?

• Theft (3)
• General antisocial behavior (3)
• Theft from motor vehicles (3)
• Criminal damage (2)
• Hate crime or hate incident (0)

How would you prefer the police to contact you once they received the online crime report?
The most preferred method was email, phone and then letter, face to face was next, followed by Facebook and then Twitter.

General preferred methods of contact.

In general how would you like the police to contact you?
The most preferred method was email, phone and then face to face, followed by letter, Facebook and Twitter.
(One person responded that it would depend on the reason.)

In general how would you like to contact the police?
The most preferred method was email, phone, website and then letter, face to face and lastly Facebook and Twitter.

How would you like to find out what the police are doing?
The most preferred method was website, email and then phone, face to face, YouTube Facebook and then Twitter.

The new features in order of preference that you’d like to see on our website were:

• Access details about the progress of your crime
• Sign up & register for email news & updates
• Email local policing newsletter
• Online meetings

Conclusions

That we need to look at:

• The structure of the site and how certain information is targeted to its audience.
• The accessibility widget
• The freshness and relevancy of the content

Lessons learnt from the consultation process so far.

• That only one short but comprehensive online form should have been produced. This should have been accessed directly through the sites top banner rather than the web teams site pages.
• And that the one-to-one usability studies were exceedingly useful in clarifying what works and doesn’t work on the present site.

The next stage

• Reviewing the Local policing team’s questionnaires
• Organize discussion groups with the Local policing teams.
• Organise meetings to discuss content with stakeholders.

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