A guide to doing user research for beneficial ownership systems

Summary

This guide to doing user research is for all implementers of beneficial ownership registers – from in-house digital teams, to specialised contractors, to teams creating commercial off-the-shelf products.

Open Ownership wants to support the creation of effective, user-centric registers. To that end, this guide will take you step by step through conducting user research, which will help you ensure registers meet the needs of their users, such as government officials, businesses, and the general public. Whether or not your team has a professional user researcher, rest assured: this guide can work for you. It can help teams and individuals with limited resources and no prior expertise conduct effective user research.

The guide explains why user research is so important, and refutes some common misconceptions we have heard from people who think it isn’t necessary for them.

The guide also covers each phase of building a BO register – gathering initial requirements, designing and building the system itself, and finally going live – and explains who you need to speak to, what you should ask them, and most importantly, what you will learn from doing so.