NHS Test & Trace

Establishing a design workflow whilst juggling ever-changing requirements

With the COVID-19 policy and guidelines changing daily, and sometimes hourly, work items and design priorities needed to be reviewed at pace. I set up a sprint cadence to keep the team structured and momentum up, whilst allowing for contingency due to policy changes and the re-prioritisation of work items.

I established a sprint cadence which ensured: team structure, support through complex nature of changing requirements, design days to shield designers from calls, multiple client review sessions, dev handoff, contingency.

Aligning with the business and policy changes

I was part of regular SLT meetings, represented EFC in business-wide calls, and gathered new requirements to inform the rest of the team. I prioritised work, set the design strategy, and led agile ceremonies to ensure alignment across our team and the clients.

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Reviewing the quick-wins & longer-term improvements

The first requirement was to understand which strategic improvements would make the most impact, with the least development time. I conducted a UX review to analyse the changes to be made, which informed the backlog of live site improvements. The outcome of a Digital Accessibility Report (DAC) also fed into this strategic backlog.

I presented the quick win changes in a digestible way for the client, this was mapped using MURAL which created efficiencies in sign-off due to ease and speed of understanding, and collaborative features of the tool.

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Data-driven decisions to inform design iterations

I led the team through a full site redesign, re-thinking how a user might self-serve, the options they are presented with, and the most efficient journeys possible. All whilst leading part of the team in making changes to the live site, acting fast & re-prioritising in response to government changes in policy.

Iterations consisted of screen changes and flow changes. Flow changes consisted of heavy client stakeholder engagement to ensure the correct questions were being asked, as the forms needed to triage to the correct agent teams.

With access to site analytics, data-informed design decisions could be made to enhance the redesign and live site. This ensured realtime user needs were being met, and popular enquiry categories were prioritised. Some of the metrics we measured throughout consisted of:

• How many enquiry forms were being submitted, implying users were not able to self-serve and find what they're looking for
• Successful completion rate for complaints and feedback
• Where users would drop off in frustration, or, because they had found the answer to their enquiry
• The top hit category pages which suggested where policy was perhaps unclear and users needed to seek more guidance
• User satisfaction through 'Is this page useful' question at the bottom of the page
• Reduction in call centre calls implying an increase in digital up-take in the service

Incremental changes to get to GDS standard

The site broke numerous GDS guidelines and did not abide to UX and content best-practices. I led the team to make changes which helped drive user trust with the site, as it was receiving some 200,000 views per week.

User testing was happening in unison to this, unearthing pain-points of the live site. These insights were used to further inform the live site iterations and full site re-design.