live-draft

Live and draft

This feature introduces the ability to make a draft of a live form so that you can prepare changes to it. You can then make all the changes live at the same time, when appropriate.

Problems we tried to solve

• GOV.UK Forms had no way of making safe changes to a live form, without lots of disruption for end users. This was a decision made to enable GOV.UK Forms to make the first form live
• When form creators made a change to a live form each change was applied immediately - each time this could affect anyone who might be filling in the live form at the time
• There was no way to make a group of changes all live at a certain date or time
• Form creators didn't have a way to prepare a group of changes that could be shared and reviewed before making them live
• Form creators were warned about the potential impacts of making a change to a live form before and after making their form live

User needs

• As a form creator, I need to make changes to a form that is live, so that the latest form can be available to users
• As a form creator, I need to make changes in a safe way, so that our end users experience of forms is not disturbed

Hypothesis

• We think that if we provide a way to make edits of a live form within a draft copy of it, then form creators can safely prepare their changes without affecting the live form and disrupting end users
• We think that if a form creator has completed their updates in a draft state, then they will be able to replace the 'old' live form with a new version of a form in a live state, minimising disruption to end users

What we did

• We ran a series of team activities to ideate and refine what the new journey would look like for form creators to make changes in a draft state.
• We wireframed and made multiple iterations of the design and user journey and then we began implementing the designs into the GOV.UK Forms product under a feature flag
• We have tested the new feature with a group of users and collated insights

Outcome

• The first tested iteration of making changes to a live form
• We created an improved user journey of making changes to a live form in a draft state
• We added new view only pages to present information about a form in a live state, like its questions
• We added a modified task list page for editing a form in a draft state
• We have iterated form preview pages to clearly distinguish draft form previews from live form previews in an accessible way
• During usability sessions, users were able to successfully make changes to a form in a draft state and understood the concept
• From research sessions we have learned about areas for improvement to iterate on further