User research
When designing the Find an address pattern we used research on existing address patterns from various DWP teams and also from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (published here).
These findings are not therefore not from user research with the DWP pattern, but may be useful for teams implementing it.
Selected research findings
The request for an address is usually a step in a larger journey: there has been evidence of issues with cognitive load and recall when citizens are asked for an address (DWP)
People from outside the UK don’t necessarily understand postcodes or house names/numbers. When prompting the user for ‘house number or name’ users, especially those that are not native to the UK, would enter the entire address in the field – there is confusion as to what is being asked
People rarely know postcodes for addresses that are not their home address, for example their pension provider or care home (DWP)
When searching for home addresses using the address finder, most users enter the postcode first as they expect it to return the address more quickly than other parts of the address (ONS)
People expect the results to be presented in ascending order of flat or building number (ONS)
Users are more likely to search by entering an organisation or street name when looking for a work or school address, or when looking for someone else’s address (ONS)
Users do not expect the building name or county to be part of their home address, and do not manually add them after selecting the address (ONS)
For most users, getting an address using the address finder is quicker than entering an address manually (ONS)
Manual address entry fields may need a higher character limit for non-residential addresses, particularly on the first line (DWP)
Screen reader users struggled with a paginated list of results: it was difficult to find the result they were looking for and some thought the ‘Next’ link would move them forward in the service (DWP)
Open questions
We expect that longer lists of radios may be harder to use than short lists, but we want more data from live services on when and how often this problem happens. Options include offering a results filter and switching to manual entry, but we recommend against using pagination.
We particularly want research on:
- options for filtering, grouping or otherwise refining long lists of results
- adaptations for international or non-residential addresses
- users' preferences and expectations for manual entry and postcode search
- accessible typeahead solutions
Discuss Find an address on GitHub
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