I worked on a series of discovery projects for the Foods Standards Agency (FSA). The goal of these projects was to understand the processes and recommend potential improvements for the services. I was the Iteraction Designer for the team. I focussed on how users interact and experience the systems and how to improve this. I worked on a number of projects including:

Approvals of Meat Plants

Food Business Operators (FBOs) must apply for approval before they can begin food production activities. This is a primarily manual service that determine how and when the FBOs will be monitored and regulated throughout their operational life. I designed an interactive prototype (Adobe XD) to show how the back-office system could work and a prototype application form that FBOs would complete to start this process off. This was built using the Government Digital Service Prototyping Toolkit and I deployed it on Heroku (message me for a link and password) for presentation.

Food Chain Information (FCI) and Collection and Communication of Inspection Results (CCIR)

Meat products can be traced from farm to fork. FCI and CCIR are the components that make it possible and easier to track animal health and welfare and food safety from the farm, to the abbatoir, through to the production line and supermarket.

Field Operations Inspection Service

This service ensures FBOs are compliant with food safety regulations and EU marketing regulations. This project looked at meat, dairy and wine inspections. The inspections are a mix of announced and unannounced (random) inspections on site. I shadowed a meat inspector during an unannounced inspection to research how the process worked in the field. This helped shape the team's recommendations.

Statement of Resource (SoR) and Rotas

The SoR document records the processing requirements and resources required at the individual premises level. It includes details about the premises and resource requirements for an FBO to comply with regulations. The rotas referred to the internal rota-plans for inspection staff in order to meet these requirements. I produced a series of paper-prototypes to demonstrate how a system could work more efficiently for inspection and finance staff.

Timesheeting

Looking at the process of completing timesheets by FSA Inspection staff. Based on the research I produced paper-prototypes to demonstrate how efficient collection of this data could work. After this project, the internal digital team developed an application based on my prototypes. The FSA are responsible for inspection activity across 900 FBOs in England and Wales. This includes unannounced and announced inspections and day-to-day "on the line" meat inspections in meat plants. That is, all meat produced in the U.K must meet high standards. These inspectors ensure these standards are met at all times.