TBIPS HC 1000205402 User Experience (UX) Services for Health-Related Web Content

NOTICE OF PROPOSED PROCUREMENT (NPP)

For

TASK BASED INFORMATICS PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (TBIPS)

GSIN: D307A Systems Integration of Informatics Commodities and Service

Reference Number:

N/A

Solicitation Number:

HC 1000205402

Organization Name:

HEALTH CANADA AND PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCY OF CANADA

Solicitation Date:

2018-12-13

Closing Date:

2019-01-04 14:00 Eastern Daylight Saving Time EDT

Anticipated Start Date:

2019-02-01

Estimated Delivery Date:

2023-01-31

Estimate Level of Effort: 

50 days - Level 3 - per year

30 days – Level 1 - per year

Contract Duration:

The Outline Agreement period will be for one (1) year from the date of contract award, with three (3) optional year periods.

Solicitation Method:

Competitive

Applicable Trade Agreements:

AIT, Canada-Chile, Canada-Columbia, Canada-Panama, Canada-Peru, NAFTA, WTO-GPA

Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement Applies:

No

Number of Contracts:

1

Requirement Details

Tendering Procedure:  Selective Tendering

This requirement is open only to those TBIPS Supply Arrangement Holders who qualified under Tier 1 for services in the National Capital Region for the following category:

One (1) B.7 Business Transformation Architect – L3

One (1) B.7 Business Transformation Architect – L1

The following SA Holders have been invited to submit a proposal:

1. ALTRUISTIC INFORMATICS CONSULTING INC

2. CloseReach Ltd.

3. Contract Community Inc.

4. Coradix technology Consulting Ltd.

5. Mindwire Systems Ltd.

6. Nortak Software Ltd.

7. ONIX Networking Canada Inc.

8. Pleiad Canada Inc.

9. Randstad Interim Inc.

10. S.i. Systems Ltd.

11. Sierra Systems Group Inc.

12. Systemscope Inc.

13. The Halifax Computer Consulting Group Inc.

14. TRM Technologies Inc., BP&M Government IM & IT Consulting Inc., IN JOINT VENTURE

15. Valcom Consulting group Inc.

Description of Work:

Health Canada requires the services of one (1) B.7 Business Transformation Architect – Level 3 and one (1) B.7 Business Transformation Architect – L1.

1. Objectives

    

The objective of this requirement is to support CPAB in assessing the performance of select HC and PHAC web content on Canada.ca through a variety of UX services on an “as and when requested” basis.

The outcomes will allow HC and PHAC to identify usability and conceptual issues that could be improved upon in order to further support the needs of Canadians and other target audiences.

1. Background

    

Canada.ca was developed with a user-centric approach that considers how a user will find, read, and understand information and services offered by the Government of Canada. HC and PHAC migrated their web content to the Canada.ca structure, look and feel in the summer of 2017.

Since then, some of the web content has been improved but not all of the improvements were assessed. HC has been working with content owners and other federal departments to improve the Government of Canada’s top health tasks (i.e. the health-related actions that Canadians most often look to the GC to enable or inform).

 Examples of top health tasks include:

• Finding out if a product has been recalled.

• Finding out the symptoms or risks for a disease or condition

• Learning about cannabis, its legalization in Canada, its health effects, its medical use

• Using Canada's Food Guide

• Finding out if a medical device is licenced for sale in Canada

• Finding out the health effects of a substance and how to get help

• Getting guidelines for immunization and vaccination practices

• Etc.

In addition to these top tasks, HC has top priorities such as but not limited to the Opioid Crisis and the Legalization of Cannabis that may require UX services to provide recommendations on the development and to update the web content. 

The health related testing may include a variety of online media – web content, web applications, mobile apps, and forms by providing one or more of the following UX services:

Description of Research and Design Methods:

UX Service

Description

Heuristic Evaluation 

Reviewing the user interface based on accepted usability principles (the heuristics). The analysis results in a list of potential usability issues to be addressed as part of an iterative design process.

Cognitive Walkthrough

Evaluation of usability where one or more evaluators work through series of representative tasks and ask set of questions as they go from the perspective of a user. The goal is to understand the experience of new or infrequent users; whether the design solution is easy or not, and why it is easy or not.

Cognitive walkthrough could be done as follows:

• Identify traits of new or infrequent users of a product or service
• Develop tasks to represent new or infrequent use
• Based on the traits identified, take user’s perspective as you walk through the tasks step by step, asking what they would attempt to do or how they would learn, what they would look for. Focus on what they are trying to accomplish.
• Analyze the results where the user struggled, and identify usability issued
• Provide results and recommendations for improvement

Persona research and creation

Representation of a cluster of users who share similar traits and behavioural patterns, and the ways they might interact with a product or a service. 

The process for persona research and creation would follow:

• Research to understand:

o Who are the users?

o Why are they using the product/service?

o What are their behaviours, assumptions and expectations? 

• Condense the research and look for relevant themes and characteristics, including specific and universal to the website and users. 
• Organize elements into persona groups that represent target users, name or classify these groups. 
• Combine and prioritize rough personas. Pair recurring goals, behaviours and pain points, and separate them into categories to get personas and identified characteristics. Keep in mind that distinctions between personas are behavioural, not demographic.
• Make them realistic by developing short backgrounds, refined goals and needs, name, a quote that sums up the persona. Include relevant demographic elements and a photo.

Other research methods in this list such as task analysis and field studies are important part of persona research and may be required.

Journey Map Creation

Visualization of the process a user goes through to accomplish a goal; their interaction with a product or a service. This is used to understand the sequence of actions, what users are thinking and how they are feeling along the way; successes, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.

Creating a journey map by gathering existing data but additional research (such as observation, contextual inquiries, and workshops with end users) may be needed to fill in the gaps. The experience might be mapped by a perspective of a persona or a more general one. 

Usability Testing

Evaluation of how people use a product or service to understand the given design’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. The goal is to identify usability problems and find more about user satisfaction by observing participants complete typical tasks with the design.

Usability testing can be conducted in person or remote, can be moderated or un-moderated.

Task Analysis

The process of learning about ordinary users by observing them in action to understand how they perform their tasks and achieve their goals.

This method helps identify the tasks that a product/service should support and helps understand:

• What goals users have
• What users do to achieve these goals
• Personal, social, cultural influences users have on tasks
• How users are influenced by their physical environment
• How their previous experience and knowledge influence their workflow

Task analysis should be done early in the process and will support other methods in this list such as personas and usability testing. It may have several levels of inquiry, from general to specific.

Field studies and interviews

These studies are done early in the process to better understand people, and to validate and discard assumptions. Field studies take place in user’s context; they vary a lot in terms of how the researcher interacts with participants. Some methods are just observational while some are adaptive interviews. 

The goals of field studies are:

· Gathering task information to understand how people do things and why they do them in certain ways

· Understanding people’s needs and opportunities to address them

· Gathering data for journey maps, personas and to understand users in depth

· Testing systems under realistic conditions

Field studies and interviews are important part of other methods in this list, such as personas, journey maps, etc.

Information Architecture (IA) design and evaluation

IA focuses on organizing, structuring and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way to support usability and findability.

Designing and evaluating IA would involve methods such as card sorting and tree testing. These methods help to understand how users group information, what they expect to find together, what path they would take for a certain task, etc.

These activities can be done in person or remote, either with physical cards or software. 

Prototype development and validation

Prototypes will enable examining a design concept’s viability with other methods such as usability testing to gain feedback from users.

Based on the evidence gathered from research, prototype design and development will be requested. The designs will follow all Government standards for accessibility, and other standards outlined in the Task Authorization.

Deliverables include wireframes, functioning prototypes in HTML, visual task flows, etc. The specific format may vary depending on the project and the intended use for the prototype. Occasionally, HC may mandate that prototypes must be created using a specific software or format. 

Multivariate and A/B testing

Test of design variations against each other, measuring which design alternative performs better for the specified goals.

A/B test will indicate which design variation performs better without details on elements of the variation whereas multivariate test allows for measuring interactions between elements. A/B testing is more suitable for major redesigns where multivariate test can be utilized to test incremental improvements to a design.

In order to support and make recommendations regarding the improvements needed for key health related tasks (web content) and key priorities, HC requires user experience (UX) services to research, test, analyze, identify and recommend best practices with the user interface.

1. Information

   *Task Authorizations (TA) will be issued against one (1) Service Outline Agreement to support the various initiatives*

   **Bidders must submit one bid for two (2) resources**

   ***The work is not currently being performed by a contractor***

Security Requirement: Common PS SRCL #9 applies

Minimum Corporate Security Required: Protected B - DOS

Minimum Resource Security Required: DOS - Reliability

Contract Authority

Name: Stephanie Cleroux

Phone Number: 613-941-2082

Email Address: stephanie.cleroux@canada.ca  

Inquiries

Inquiries regarding this RFP requirement must be submitted to the Contracting Authority named above. Request for Proposal (RFP) documents will be e-mailed directly from the Contracting Authority to the Qualified Supply Arrangement Holders who are being invited to bid on this requirement. BIDDERS ARE ADVISED THAT “BUYANDSELL.GC.CA” IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS. The Crown retains the right to negotiate with any supplier on any procurement. Documents may be submitted in either official language.

NOTE: Task‐Based Informatics Professional Services (TBIPS) Method of Supply is refreshed three (3) times per year. If you wish to find out how you can be a “Qualified SA Holder”, please contact RCNMDAI.‐NCRIMOS@pwgsc.gc.ca