Simplifying communication with citizens
By teaching techniques based on simplicity, clarity, and empathy, we helped elevate the quality of communication and services of the Porto Citizen Portal.
Simplifying communication with citizens
Sector
What we did
The challenge
Public administration and public services often involve long, bureaucratic processes that can hinder communication with citizens due to the use of complex language.
The Porto City Hall tasked us with creating a tailored UX Writing program for a team of 12 public employee from Porto’s City Hall, who works in one of the main public services touchpoints – “Portal do Munícipe”. The goal is to help these workers communicate in simple, clear, and accessible language to improve communication with citizens.
1 training course, 2 teams and 12 participants
Our goal was to equip the public servants of Porto’s Citizen Portal with the knowledge needed to create effective, user-centered communication, leading to more efficient and high-quality public services for the community. This is an essential step in building trust and fostering a positive relationship between citizens and their local government.
Activities and tools
The process
To equip these public servants with the necessary tools to better meet the needs of visitors to the Citizen’s Portal, our program focused on the following key areas:
- Understanding how language impacts the establishment of positive relationships and building trust between citizens and local government;
- Developing strategies for communicating complex information in a clear and accessible manner for all audiences;
- Learning best practices for maintaining consistent messaging across various communication channels and touchpoints;
- Recognizing the role of effective communication in improving the quality of public services and making them more accessible to citizens;
- Exploring techniques for adapting communication to different audiences and contexts, including online and offline formats;
- Learning how to create effective user-centered communication;
- Emphasizing the importance of user experience in building trust and establishing positive relationships between citizens and their local government;
- Highlighting the importance of empathy for public employees to understand users and local communities;
These focus areas were essential to empowering public servants with skills and insights that enable them to communicate more effectively, ultimately improving the quality of service for the citizens they serve.
Why Tangível?
There is a time before and after Tangível’s training.Câmara Municipal do Porto
The Before and After
Two citizen-facing teams of 6 participants each enrolled in Tangível’s training program, which proved to be transformative. The training was so effective that the participants noted a clear delineation between their approach to public services before and after completing the program.
They reported a significant increase in their ability to provide quality public service by easing some public’s bureaucratic and complex processes, resulting in a positive impact and ultimately simplifying the lives of the citizens they served. This program emphasized the importance of consistent messaging and empathy for public employees to understand users and local communities.
The training program taught them new skills and provided a fresh perspective on their roles as public employees, inspiring them to approach their work with empathy. As such, the program successfully improved the quality of public services in the community by improvements in the artifacts, processes, and teams that constitute the “Portal do Munícipe”.
