Project #1: Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals (BIIA)
The BIIA is an administrative court that handles appeals to decisions made by the Department of Labor and Industries. Some appeals are filed, for example, by injured workers or business owners when they are protesting workers’ compensation claim decisions. Others may be small business owners appealing an L&I workplace safety citation.
Because some of these people cannot afford, or do not want, an attorney, the BIIA staff offers them a booklet called “Your Right to Be Heard” to help them understand the legal process. Nevertheless, the BIIA staff still gets many phone calls from citizens wanting to make sure they understand their instructions and rights.
About the project
One of the BIIA’s Plain Talk projects is to overhaul the 20-page booklet to make it more concise, clear, and targeted to the actual questions customers typically have. They began rewriting on July 25, 2008, and plan to have the new product ready by December 2008.
The BIIA’s Plain Talk lead, Jay Raish, says the goal is to make the guide clearer, which, she hopes, will increase the number of "pro se" (without attorney) litigants who are able to find the information they need.
The BIIA has debated how to best measure the success of its somewhat qualitative goal. If the new booklet, when completed, does provide its customers with clearer explanations, and therefore better customer service, how can they show this? Is there a way to prove it? Jay had considered having staff track the number of phoned-in customer questions about the booklet – both the old and new versions. Would the phone calls drop?
That approach had two problems:
- Some people are more likely to call – with more informed questions – when they read something they understand.
- Tracking the subject of phone inquiries can be burdensome for staff, especially if they have many other duties.
How they will measure
The BIIA decided to measure performance through usability testing. Unlike a questionnaire, focus group, or comment sheet that would ask people “how they liked” something, the usability test would ask representative test subjects to actually use the “Your Right to Be Heard” booklet. The test would, for example, ask the test subjects to explain how they would do specific tasks in an appeal – using the booklet as their only resources.
Like most usability tests, the program would individually test the original document with 4-6 representative citizens, then test the revised document with another 4-6 citizens. At this point, she would have the data she needed to compare if there was a change in how well people could do typical appeal tasks. After that, she might refine the document even further, and then conduct a final usability test.
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Project Lead
360-753-6824