by OSCAR MAYR
UK National Health Service
NHS 24 Scotland and 111 Wales needed UX support to assess the processing of patients from the call taker and clinician out of hours. Moreover, they wanted to explore how to offer a remote service to enable the same two user groups to be more efficient in patient response.
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Duration: 2 Months
VALUE
40-60% increase in patient processing for doctors out of hour service
The system supports the training instead of having the training to learn the system
Smoother and more efficient tool at times of high demand
Created a mobility concept to improve staff morale caused the office rota
Contributed to prevent patients reverting to the 999 emergency service due to long waits
MY CONTRIBUTION
Delivered a two weeks discovery through ethnographic research, shadowing, personas & user journey mapping
Rationalised a list of opportunities to inform the design improvements on the existing service
Absorbed all the existing research provided by NHS along with survey data and translated it into the journey mapping to support the opportunities
Collaborated with the tech team, functional consultants to incorporate user needs with business requirements and technical feasibility
Delivered full design specs to declutter and reduce the number of steps in the journey of call takers and clinicians
THE ASKs
The ask from NHS 24 Scotland was to resolve triaging issues around processing patients at times of high volume and reduce to the minimum the queue of calls. A short 2 weeks User Research evaluation was requested to deliver a set of opportunities to improve the service.
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The ask from NHS 111 Wales was to review the existing research and propose a mobile concept solution to improve staff morale and efficiency by re-shaping the way calls were handled by activating clinicians closer to the patient's location.
THE APPROACH
Design thinking was the approach used to answer both of the asks. Design thinking is a tool, a mindset, a hands-on user-centric approach to problem-solving that leads to efficiency and innovation, empowering people to achieve their goals - leading to differentiation and competitive advantage.
USER
NEEDS
BUSINESS
GOALS
TECHNOLOGY
FEASIBLE
Customers and/or employees enables businesses achieve its goals through the use of technology.
Align people's needs with business goals creates the pathway to have a human centric technology.
DISCOVERY & DESIGN PHASE - NHS 24 SCOTLAND
The approach for the discovery phase for NHS 24 was a compact plan of one week of User Research activities (Ethnographic research, journey mapping etc...), one week of research analysis and one week of design mockup, reporting and steer-co presentation.
1
Identify the audience
2
Set up and run ethnographic studies
(Immersion in the call takers and clinician office. Observing behaviours and shadowing.)
3
Define personas
(needs, goals, frustrations)
4
Map the AS-IS user journeys
(Identify opportunities)
5
Design mockup & final presentation
(Translate opportunities in changes to the user flow and recommend any improvements to the business process)
 Ethnographic research |  Call taker journey map |  Clinician journey map |
|---|---|---|
 Clinician persona |  Call taker persona |  Screen flow diagram |
 TO-Be Design |  AS-IS screen flow |
DISCOVERY AND DESIGN PHASE - NHS 111 WALES
NHS 111 Wales conducted previous research including user interviews and surveys to find that 27% of its workforce (predominantly clinicians) had low morale due to poor geolocation when assisting patients at home.
The discovery phase saw predominantly a thorough analysis of the existing research that resulted in an ideation stage with the business.
After that, a testable mockup of the new mobility service was designed to initiate user engagement with usability testing.
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Challenges & mitigations:
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At that time the client had a low UX maturity and wanted to proceed without usability testing
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The program was predominantly tech-led
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A RAID sheet was provided in order to create awareness on the risks to follow best practice
1
Review existing research
(Analysed use cases provided by the business, rationalised insights and data captured in the survey)
2
Story-boarded the key use cases
3
Rapid testable prototyping
 Existing research |  NHS Storyboard Mobile |  NHS Storyboard DESKTOP |
|---|---|---|
 TO-BE screenflow |  Design mockup |
CONCLUSIONS
This is an example of two shorter projects that involved a swift move from research to design to working with constraints, time and UX maturity.
