Future recommendations: Touchpoints for UX research - 18F/federalist-jekyll-netlify-cms-guides GitHub Wiki

What is Touchpoints?

Touchpoints is a free digital survey tool provided by Technology Transformation Services (TTS) to improve the federal customer experience, so you can hear directly from real users. It’s easy to implement into the ChildCare.gov site.

Touchpoints allows your team to embed PRA-friendly feedback forms on your websites to gather open-ended, qualitative feedback directly from users. It's currently in use by 60 different federal teams with over 300 active feedback forms.

Touchpoints and the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)

Touchpoints includes the following built-in templates:

  • Recruiter template form (PRA-approved) This is for recruiting participants for user-centered design research. You can solicit interest from people willing to provide additional feedback about a public web property or service.

  • Open-ended contract form (PRA-approved) This is for soliciting general feedback for a public web property or service.

  • Customer experience form template (fast-track PRA approval) This is for gathering customer experience feedback as defined in Section 280 of the OMB Circular A-11 on Managing Customer Experience and Improving Service Delivery . This a “fast track PRA,” so it should only take a few weeks to get PRA approval.

See Do I Need Clearance? on pra.digital.gov to find out if you need PRA clearance when gathering other forms of information from the public.

Recommendations for using Touchpoints on ChildCare.gov

  1. Gather open-ended feedback from ChildCare.gov users. Why did users visit the site? Were they able to find what they were looking for? OCC could review feedback left via Touchpoints at a predetermined cadence, and use this data to inform future site improvements.

  2. Conduct semi-structured interviews with ChildCare.gov users. Touchpoints can serve as an “intercept” to connect directly with real users who leave their contact information so OCC can better understand their needs.

  3. Get feedback on specific pages or features. Touchpoints can be implemented on specific pages to gather more focused feedback from users.

Getting started

To get started, simply create an account on Touchpoints. Once you have an account, you can begin creating forms.

For instructions on how to add a Touchpoints form to the live site, see page 21 of the Developer Guide for ChildCare.gov.

If you have any questions or need support, you can reach out to Ryan Wold, Product Lead for Touchpoints at [email protected].

Enabling Touchpoints on ChildCare.gov

To enable Touchpoints on the site (after getting PRA authorization), set use_touchpoints: true inside _config.yml. This will automatically make the default site template begin including the Touchpoints JavaScript file. Also add your form ID into _config.yml as touchpoints_form_id: your_form_id

Terms of service

Touchpoints has a three-year data retention plan. After that time, the Touchpoints team will support agencies in exporting, archiving, or deleting their data. Review the terms of service for detailed information.