Scope Q (SC-Q) Card
DBD Cornucopia > Deck > Scope > Q
Card Details - Queen of Scope
Abbreviation
SC-Q
Card's focus
The focus of this card is assumptions about users
Threat to claimants
Elsie executes the system to only permit a single end user per claim (e.g. the claimant, their appointee)
Threat to claimants
Elsie executes the system to only permit a single end user per claim (e.g. the claimant, their appointee).
Some examples of how this threat could lead to harms (negative effects on claimants)
The design recommendations and implications relevant to the card are listed below in the next section, but even those can be somewhat abstract and difficult to think about during practical day-to-day implementation. Therefore, some example harms are provided to complement the more formal research outputs. These examples are unique per card, and are only published on these web pages (i.e. in no other project outputs).
- The lack of support for access by other people makes it very difficult and possibly illegal for claimants to get formal or informal assistance, making it less likely they receive the award, or receive a lower payment
- Claimants are prevented from logging into their claim on two devices at the same time, preventing them from using two small screens (e.g. phones) to get different views on the information, like someone else can do with mutiple windows on a single desktop or laptop device, making it harder to complete required actions
The examples are to help understand the threat on the card, not to suppress thinking and innovation. Incorporating these examples exactly, or closely matching ones, should be scored down when playing DBD Cornucopia as a game.
Applicable design recommendations and implications
These are reproduced here from Research Briefing N
Embrace a wider ecosystem and fuller claimant activity viewpoint for digitised public services
- Legitimise extensibility and customisation of digital infrastructure
Deploy technology in ways that will permit, support and advocate integration with digital welfare by other actors. Provide timely, free and open access to system information, supporting content, and details of upcoming changes and updates to support these efforts. - Design for the needs of claimants’ lives covering their expansive activities
Recognise that service take-up requires more than direct interactions with the state. Ensure design is not restricted to service delivery between interaction points of claimants and the state within a 'user journey', and instead span all actors and mediating instruments that come together to achieve the claimant's goal.
Design systems which support the division of labour with claimants' ecosystems
- Integrate accurate specific and contextual primary guidance about making claims within systems and promote secondary professional assistance
None
Signpost when additional assistance should be sought and recognise the time and effort needed to complete these activities
- Reduce barriers for claimants to seek assistance and allow time for this to occur
Provide pointers to claimants where they can obtain independent professional help ensuring there is always a choice of communication channels and sources, whether by self-service or from elsewhere in ecosystems. Avoid deadlines which limit claimants' opportunities to access assistance, providing sufficiently long periods for activities to include these actions if required.
General Notes
Card values (i.e. 'Queen' for this card) are for game play and are not correlated with the severity of harm. This is because threats cannot be ranked directly since they can affect individuals in different ways due to situations and circumstances, or affect fewer or more claimants, or the harms can arise in claimants' support networks and wider society.
The threat description uses a person's name as the "attacker" (i.e. 'Elsie' for this card), which can be thought of someone involved with implementation. They could have any role which influence digitisation. So they could be a database administrator, or a copy writer, or a quality assurance specialist, etc, or all of these. Everyone could have some influence on the claimant threat described. The names were randomly selected from those currently most popular as given names for boys and girls (UK Office for National Statistics).
The example harms provided are drawn from the research data (which explored not only parts of existing services but also the effects of possible changes to those), from the author's own knowledge of web application development and testing, the author's own experience of helping citizens to claim Universal Credit (UC) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and from suggestions submitted by other people (make a suggestion). The threats and example harms do not necessarily exist in the current UC or PIP deployments or in ecosystems around those services, but they might well do.
All the cards in this Scope suit are: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q K A
The other suits in the deck are: Architecture, Agency, Trust, Porosity and Cornucopia (plus Jokers).