By placing the needs and inclusion of all users at the centre of digital service design, The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland) is ensuring that all users have access to modern digital products that are reliable and easy to use.  

About GTC Scotland

GTC Scotland is the teaching profession’s independent registration and regulation body working to maintain and enhance trust in teaching. Their role is to register and regulate teachers and college lecturers by keeping a public register and setting and upholding the standards for entering and remaining in the teaching profession. 

The project 

In February 2024, GTC Scotland launched the 'Customer Digital Experience' project, commissioning BJSS and SPARCK to undertake a user-centred design approach to improve the quality, efficiency and sustainability of their digital services. 

GTC Scotland found themselves in a position whereby their external-facing products and services became very dated with many user experience issues resulting in a growing number of frustrations amongst registrants and increased reputational risk for the business.  

The discovery phase of this project aimed to address these known issues and recommend phased improvement work that, using user-centred design principles, would help to modernise the entire registrant digital journey and improve customer experience of GTC Scotland’s digital products and services.  

The approach

BJSS & SPARCK undertook an initial 8-week discovery with the GTC Scotland digital team. Throughout discovery the team placed the needs and inclusion of all users at the centre of digital service design, ensuring that in a future service users would have access to a consolidated set of modern digital products and services that are accessible, reliable, and easy to use.  

The discovery followed a design-thinking approach, with our service designer and business analyst guiding GTC Scotland on how to practice and embed user-centred design principles. The team approached the discovery in three distinct phases:  

  • Uncovering the assumptions and as-is: In this stage we defined the problem statement, shared knowledge of the service, documented the as-is journeys and aligned stakeholders on the future vision and best practice. 
  • Defining opportunities and to-be: In this stage we conducted user research with registrants, documented research insights and identified opportunities, incorporating feedback continuously in collaboration with the project team. 
  • Aligning on future service: In this stage we aligned the team on the to-be design and introduced the future service model in line with our recommendations following discovery: a product design roadmap. 

The results

The discovery highlighted key areas for GTC Scotland to prioritise in their digital transformation journey. 

Be more-user centric 

Design the service around the registrant needs identified in research and use the needs to scope the requirements for design. 

Streamline products and services  

Consolidate the existing products and services into one single, joined-up digital platform, removing the burden on GTC Scotland and the user.  

Define the capabilities and processes 

Identify process efficiencies and streamline service capabilities to improve user experience across the journeys. 

Enhance the ‘Trusted Teaching’ brand 

Focus on the objectives of the brand and its users to build a service which aligns to these values. 

“Working with BJSS has given us the best possible start to our project, ensuring we have our users at the centre of our approach and that we have an excellent foundation of information and documentation upon which to build a successful product. 

Their professionalism, expertise and dedication to the project was invaluable, with the most impressive quality and volume of output. They very quickly absorbed and processed large amount of complex information to learn about our organisation in depth over a relatively short period of time - they integrated so successfully that really did feel like part of our team.” 

Lee Robertson, Head of Digital, GTC Scotland 

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