Leading discovery and alpha research for NHS England and NHS Improvement
Discovery | Alpha | Iterative design
User interviews | Usability testing | Prototyping | Project direction
The FutureNHS Collaboration Platform is a virtual collaboration platform from the NHS. It supports people working in health and social care to make change, improve and transform across organisations, places and professions. As Project Director and Lead User Researcher, I led a discovery and alpha to better understand how to enhance FutureNHS platform capability to better support specific user groups with both internal collaboration and collaboration with others.
What is FutureNHS?
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FutureNHS is a virtual collaboration platform from the NHS, open to anyone working in or for health and social care. The platform supports commissioners, providers, senior management, front line staff, clinicians, health and social care colleagues, voluntary and community sector organisations, commercial sector and other stakeholders.
As the platform continues to grow, FutureNHS were looking to enhance the product capability in terms of how it can support partnerships of organisations (known as ICSs) both with internal and national collaboration.
The project and problem statements
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As Lead User Researcher and Project Director, I led a discovery and alpha to help FutureNHS address a number of key problem statements they'd established in pre-discovery.
We ran research with over 50 participants (including those working in the NHS with various access needs, from visual to cognitive and mobility impairments), to investigate the following problem statements (see image).
I led a multidisciplinary project team of researchers, content designers, interaction designers and technical analysts.
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How can FutureNHS support people working in ICSs to connect with other people inside and outside their ICS more easily? ​​
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How can FutureNHS make it easier for ICSs to manage and coordinate events through FutureNHS? ​
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How can FutureNHS support ICSs to collaborate with their stakeholders and one another more efficiently?
The approach in Discovery
What we found
Who are our users?
In discovery, I recruited and interviewed 18 users working in a range of different roles and levels of seniority in the NHS, from across all regions in England.
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From these interviews and wider desktop research, I developed a research report detailing all key themes around user needs, behaviours, and motivations, as well as a set of core personas highlighting pain-points and opportunities.
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What are their user journeys?
I also mapped the key user journeys that the different user groups would typically take, based on the problem statements defined in our project kick-off.
These included:
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Connecting and networking
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Hosting an event
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Collaborating
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User needs, hypotheses and riskiest assumptions to test in alpha
As a main outcome of the Discovery phase, I defined a set of user needs, hypotheses and riskiest assumptions to test in alpha.
It was important that any designs we explored in alpha were underpinned by credible user needs evidenced through our research.
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The approach in alpha
A user-centred design approach
In alpha we adopted an iterative design approach, starting with the user needs uncovered in discovery, developing solutions based on our hypotheses, testing them, iterating based on the findings from our research, then testing further. The approach allowed us to rapidly test and improve our ideas with real users.
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Needs and hypotheses
Based on our user needs and hypotheses uncovered in discovery, we agreed on a set of solutions to design, starting with low-fidelity wireframes. We also defined a set of research questions/criteria to address through structured usability testing of our proposed solutions. Once we had defined our key journeys and content to test, we then developed working prototypes
Prototyping solutions, testing and iterating
Based on our hypotheses uncovered in discovery, we then translated our wireframes into dynamic high fidelity prototypes using Figma to test with real users of the platform. We used GOV.UK and NHS patterns/components from both design systems in our prototypes. Following an initial round of testing, we then iterated our designs based on our findings, optimising our solutions for further usability testing. Our participants also included 12 individuals with various access needs (cognitive, visual, mobility).
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Presenting the final report
After several rounds of usability testing, including further semi-structured interviews with participants, we created a research report covering all the key outcomes from our sessions. Based on the detailed findings from the alpha research, we were confident the solutions had been validated through three design iterations to fulfil the intended outcomes as defined by our hypotheses in discovery. Therefore, we recommended proceeding with the development of an MVP solution. We created a set of user stories alongside our final prototyped designs based on the findings in alpha.
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A MVP and plan for Beta
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Alongside a technical solutions evaluation (created by a lead Technical Analyst) and the final research report, prototypes and user stories, I presented a proposed high-level project plan, basic cost plan and capacity requirements for the beta phase of development. This allowed FutureNHS to confidently progress into the next stage of product development.
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All across the board from the research right through to the project direction and the level of presentation has been top. This was a great participant recruit…some great candidates…very smooth sessions…the preparations in advance really paid off…I appreciate all the effort. Tom is an asset to have on a project.
Marianthi Vezertzi
User Researcher
FutureNHS
Through iterative, user-centred design methods, I was able to deliver a set of solutions that were underpinned by real user needs, and validated with real users. This ensured that FutureNHS were able to progress to Beta and build functionality that they were confident fulfilled the genuine needs of public health workers in England.