The EPP Group of the European Parliament is, in laymans terms, the leading political coalition in European politics, holding the most seats in the Parliament and the most executive leaders (Prime Ministers and Presidents) in the European Member States.
For the EPP Group, I led of multi-disciplinary team that created and an insights led digital strategy which was then aligned with an aligned user experience (UX) approach that was implemented through a website redesign and build using the Drupal platform.
Our approach to gathering insights upon which to base the strategy was extensive, with interviews with both internal and external stakeholders, including lobbyists and members of the media who might make use of the website within their own workflows. We also ran workshops and conducted “work shadowing”, a process where we observed the normal working experience of various roles within the Group, from policy advisors to press officers, to MEPs.
Two key insights came out of this process: 1) the priority audiences of the site were usually specialised around a specific legislative topic of the Parliament, for example Energy or Manufacturing and, 2) that these audiences wanted to gather insight directly from their topical peers, not generalists. The approach developed, therefore, made greater use of the indepth knowledge of the Advisors within the Group, with Press Officers taking on the role of sub-editor and facilitator.
The Group continues to follow the strategy developed through this project, following training of all Group staff, both on the change in approach as well as use of the Drupal CMS and pre-defined workflows for commissioning, sign-off and translation.