Describe your idea:

Improve TWFY by commissioning usability research to analyse the site, monitor a variety of users, & make recommendations.

My own suggestions would be about improving Search. E.g. a search for ‘Cambridge’ should: 1. offer info about the MP for Cambridge; 2. group debates by bill; 3. separate different types of result, e.g. bills, written answers, other debates (explained in links or popups); 4. use shorter extracts & smaller text, so one can more easily scan down a list of results (I can only fit 2 on screen at a time. Compare with Google’s output); 5. change the often very unhelpful extracts for ‘Written answers’. It would be far better to always use the *question* as the extract, even though it does not contain the search term.

What problem does it solve?:

TheyWorkForYou is an essential tool for holding Parliament to account. Researchers and workers in Parliament have come to rely on it. However, as a tool for ordinary citizens, its value is limited by the fact that its usability is not very good. This is for a variety of reasons, some easily remediable, but some (I guess) will require quite a lot of work on extra metadata. I have mentioned particular problems but also suggested commissioning a usability report because if significant resources are going to be put into improving the site, it would help to target them well.

Type of idea: New feature for an existing project