Find financial help during COVID-19 Documentation

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Research

Methodology and main insights

The benefit finder was designed to be an intermediary between gated, personalized information accessible through the Canada Revenue Agency’s “My Account” or ESDC’s “My Service Canada Account” and public, generalized information available on Canada.ca. In order to investigate how to better meet these needs, we used several research methods :

  • Competitive analysis: March-April 2020

    • We conducted a competitive analysis to learn from other similar, existing products. A number of similar products were evaluated on how successfully they met user needs, as interpreted by design experts (heuristics).

  • Online situation scans: March-May 2020

    • We scanned online for situations from social media, news articles, and stories from family and friends, as a supplement to survey and guerrilla test findings.

  • Guerrilla testing: March-June 2020

    • We conducted guerrilla testing in order to work within tight timelines. We used this method to quickly and approximately assess test concepts and identify content design and usability issues.
    • Guerrilla testing is useful for speedy pulse checks. We treated the findings with caution as we did not have time to build a participant panel and range of situations to cover every type of person who might use the tool.
    • During moderated, 1-on-1, remote sessions, participants were asked to tell us about their life situations and to try using our tool while talking aloud.

    • Due to our timelines, our sampling was not rigorous and our sample size was small. In the span of April-June 2020, we conducted guerrilla testing with 37 participants, over 7 rounds of testing.

      • 27 Anglophone participants
      • 10 Francophone participants

  • COVID-19 situation and needs survey: April 2020

    • We conducted a large sample survey of 223 Canadians financially affected by COVID-19. This informed the product roadmap for our benefit finder. This survey also broadened our research efforts to ensure that we gathered knowledge about a diverse population.
    • Through this survey we learned that 20% of respondents were still unsure of their eligibility for financial benefits: 18% were unsure about Employment Insurance (EI) specifically and 17% were unsure about CERB specifically. We learned that 40% of respondents still had questions about financial benefits.

  • Feedback form

    • Using the feedback component from CDS and Canada.ca’s “Report a problem” design, we have implemented a feedback button on every page of our tool. Issues and feedback are automatically compiled into an Airtable and manually coded into themes.
    • Feedback submissions without completed open-text are used for aggregate data analysis, such as determining the highest category of issue in the last week.
    • We compiled a summary of this feedback for the team (May 7-27, 2020) to identify issues occurring on each page. This allowed us to learn about situations that are not covered by the benefit finder.
    • The ‘dashboard’ (actually called ‘Blocks’ on AirTable) shows, per page, the frequency of each issue, as well as the free text added for that page. The viewer/researcher can filter the dashboard by time of current and ongoing issues. The viewer can also access a chart view showing changes over time. This includes changes in the number of instances of each reported issue per page.
    • We learned through the feedback form that people receiving disability benefits were not able to get past the first few questions.

  • Usability testing with people with disabilities:

    • In order to ensure our tool is accessible, we conducted usability testing with people with disabilities.
    • As we had done in guerrilla testing, we asked participants to tell us about their situations and then asked them to try using our tool.
    • In the span of 1 month, we conducted 2 rounds of testing with 7 people with disabilities, 3 of whom used adaptive technology.

  • Review of other existing research resources such as:

Motivations and needs

When designing government products and services, user contexts and questions are generally fairly stable. In most cases, research activities have at least a few months, and often a year, in which to reach conclusive findings. Due to the COVID crisis, the Canadian context evolved more rapidly than anticipated, and caused changes to available benefits.

However, the public’s motivation for reducing financial stress seemed consistent throughout the 2.5 months of product development.

Motivations

  • Get the greatest amount of financial help possible; not ‘losing out’.

    • Regardless of COVID-19, people try to improve their situation.
  • Avoid using savings and try to control spending.
  • Fulfill a moral obligation to avoid applying for benefits to which they are not entitled.
  • Avoid trouble with the government.

Needs

  • Access easy-to-understand information.
  • Access factual information that will not cause harm.
  • Confirm that use of the benefit finder will not harm their eligibility.
  • Encounter consistent information across mediums, such as the Prime Minister’s announcements, news, friends, Canada.ca, including current information.
  • Read only the minimum amount required.

To learn more about our research findings, please contact us at Canadian Digital Service.