North Yorkshire Council Tax Payment
2 min read
Unsolicited UX research — improving the online council tax payment experience
Overview
This project grew out of repeated personal difficulties paying council tax online, frustrations that were widely echoed by other residents on the Council’s social media channels.
At the time, residents could pay by Standing Order/Direct Debit or by completing the online process manually each month. For anyone unable to set up a Standing Order, the website was a regular source of stress and wasted time.
I set out to understand how people were actually paying, where the experience broke down, and whether a simpler approach could work better.
The challenge
The live payment flow created recurring problems:
No way to undo actions or correct mistakes without starting again
No clear protection against accidental duplicate payments
Frequent crashes that forced people to re-enter details, sometimes many times in one session
Vague error messages with no useful next steps
Little help for technical failures, especially for deaf or hard-of-hearing residents
Many people also struggled to set up Standing Orders because payment dates changed each month.
What I did
I ran the research end-to-end:
Project scoping, secondary research and assumption mapping
A heuristic evaluation of the live payment journey using Nielsen’s usability heuristics
25 in-person pop-up interviews outside Council offices
15 remote interviews via Zoom, recruited through the Council’s social media
Affinity mapping and user journey mapping
Concept development from sketches to paper wireframes and a high-fidelity prototype
Prototype testing with 30 residents
The concept focused on securely storing details, cutting repetitive data entry, and giving clearer progress and confirmation throughout the payment.
Outcome
The research confirmed the problems were widespread and that demand for a better solution was strong.
100% of interview participants said they would welcome an alternative that stored their details and made payment quicker
The prototype was positively received by all testers
Time on task dropped from 30+ minutes to 5–10 minutes
Residents especially valued not having to re-enter information every month
A simple social media question about wanting an alternative payment method received a 100% positive response
After I shared the findings, the Council reviewed the research and redesigned the payment pages. The improved experience made paying council tax noticeably less stressful.
What I learned
Combining heuristic evaluation, street interviews, remote conversations, journey mapping and prototype testing built a much stronger case than any single method could have.
It also showed that careful, well-evidenced unsolicited research can still create real change. Even without an official brief, a clear picture of resident experience was enough to prompt meaningful improvement.
Practical lessons included the value of a proper research plan, piloting sessions before full recruitment, and being ready for the realities of in-person fieldwork.
