Changed field labels to 'Address line 1' and 'Address line 2'

[terrysimpson99]

This change did three things:

1. Stopped the second field label being invisible
2. Added 'optional' to second field label
3. Made the labels 'Address line 1' and 'Address line 2'

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[terrysimpson99]

The related pull request #2045 has been merged. We can now implement that on all our services.

However, I'd like to know if this pull request is likely to be considered in the near future? If so, we can wait and implement both at the same time.

[Ciandelle]

Good morning Terry,

Could you tick the box that allows edits from maintainers? I've included a handy guide explaining how to.

Thanks in advance :)
Design System team

[Ciandelle]

Good afternoon Terry,

Just thought I’d update you with the results of the working group review.

Overall the working group is very happy with the proposed changes to the address fields. However it was agreed that the county field should be reinstated, but made an optional field. The working group felt that users would feel that the county field is important to their sense of identity.

We have looked at the advice from the Royal Mail on this field which states:

“There is no need to include a county name, your letters and parcels will reach your intended recipient without one. If, however, you’d prefer to include a county name, you are welcome to do so”.

Although we appreciate your concerns about the use of this field, we feel that by making this an optional field, it most satisfies the needs of users.

Kind regards

The Design System team

[terrysimpson99]

" The working group felt that users would feel that the county field is important to their sense of identity."

I've never heard of that angle before but that doesn't mean it isn't a significant need. Before you reinstate it, let's get evidence. I'd be happy to test it in upcoming tests. Can we work together on a hypothesis?

[terrysimpson99]

Could you tick the box that allows edits from maintainers? I've included a handy guide explaining how to.

I looked at the guide and failed to work out how to do it. I usually get help from somebody on technical issues like this and they're not responding right now. If somebody contacts me, I'd be happy to share my screen for them to talk me through it.

[ImranH-GDS]

Hi @terrysimpson99, we are going to go back to the Working Group to see if they have evidence from their users, but would definitely appreciate any testing on your side. Furthermore, if you have any evidence that users do not need a county field, please share it with us. We are looking for user experience, rather than operational processes.

We do have to follow this up though, as the Working Group are a key part of our governance process. They were unanimous on keeping county in. They considered the changes in relation to a number of services in gov and the public sector, and recommended it strongly. Their thought was that an 'optional' status was seen as a good compromise of needs.

[terrysimpson99]

Thanks for your reply. Services are now being rolled out without a county field, in accordance with the current guidance. So we do have the opportunity to ask users who have no county field about sense of identity.

Many of our services ask for address of an employer and that's the only address. If we found there was no relationship between sense of identity and a business address I suspect somebody might say we researched the wrong target. Am I correct in thinking the target is the user's home address?

I can ask questions of participants in research but what would the questions be? How about:
County version (manual input):
(1) wait to see if user enters county and record if they do
(2) If they don't enter county then ask: "Now you've given that address, is there anything you'd like to add to that address?"
(3) For users who enter county and those that don't, ask: "Have you got any comments about county in relation to sense of identity?"

County version (postcode finder input - which never provides county):
(1) wait to see if user tries to update postcode finder result with county and record if they do
(2) If they don't enter county then ask: "Now you've given that address, is there anything you'd like to add to that address?"
(3) For users who enter county and those that don't, ask: "Have you got any comments about county in relation to sense of identity?"

Non-county version (manual input and postcode finder input - which never provides county):
(1) wait for unprompted requests for the ability to enter county
(2) After (1), then ask: "Now you've given that address, is there anything you'd like to add to that address?"
(3) After (2) "Have you got any comments about that in relation to sense of identity?"
(4) Monitor feedback reports to see if users complain about being unable to enter county

We might be able to an AB test - one variant has the county field and the other doesn't - the measure could be errors and submission success.

I can also write to Royal Mail and ask them if they have any evidence about how the absence of county affects sense of identity. I'd welcome help with drafting the letter.

The term 'sense of identity' is quite fuzzy and I'd like to be able to respond if a user says "What do you mean by sense of identity?". Can somebody suggest a response?

Entering a county in an online form does not mean it will be appear in correspondence to the user. In my research I've seen that user-input-address-text can be edited or cross-checked for a match with other data that subsequently gets used. This might mean it's only the postcode and first line of the user-input-address that's important. So there are two things here: the online typing; and what the user sees in correspondence. How do those two things relate to sense of identity? If a county is taken online but not used for correspondence, is that more irritating for the user than not taking it?

If 'sense of identity' had been mentioned before now, I might have been able to discuss it with colleagues, people in slack, in the github discussion and in the pull requests (I think there have been three pull request now and two versions of the guidance). Everything on a page should only be there if it serves a purpose. A feature without a purpose should not be made optional, it should be removed. I know that there is a belief that it's required for sense of identity. The question is, of course, is there any evidence for that?

It would also help if somebody could confirm if this is nothing to do with speed and errors of form filling. If that's the case, then it shrinks the problem space dramatically. The performance analyst and I can save a lot of time that we would have spent looking at data. We would then be focussing on how a user feels following an interaction with a government service - which is difficult but at least it's a confined scope.

I'm offering to work on this because the address component is frequently used, and is a fairly complex pattern compared to others. If we get evidence that sense of identity is a significant issue then I'll support a revision to the guidance as it stands today.

[christopherthomasdesign]

Looks good 👍

We're going to separate the 'address line x' change from the county field one so that we can make this change straight away. We should hopefully reach a conclusion on the county field soon. Thanks for again for your input on this @terrysimpson99!