The Health Foundation - case study
The Health Foundation wants the UK to have a healthcare system of the highest possible quality – safe, effective, person-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. They are involved in the assessment of health services in order to identify key areas to improve the way they work.
Background
We were contacted by The Health Foundation to provide a proposal on user testing for a new website they were in the process of developing. They wanted early feedback on the proposed web site design by way of an expert review on visuals and two rounds of user testing phased into their development process to determine how representative users use the site and the response to the new feature they were suggesting.
Screenshot
Challenge to meet
We were asked to gather practical insights during user interviews that would inform the design and development of a new navigation system and assess if the proposed designs were working. We were working with a third party who were providing the site design and back end development work.
Benefits and outcomes
We identified suggestions and improvements to the visuals from our expert review, which were implemented in time for the first round of user testing. After the first round of user testing improvements were again made and put into the next build for the second round of testing.
The report we produced captured key issues from both rounds of testing, including areas such as labelling and functionality on the main navigation bar.
What we did
We recruited 8 participants, made up of existing and prospective customers of varying age ranges and gender. These were then interviewed using a mixture of self determined and predefined tasks on the website. We worked with a specialist medical recruiter as the customers were fairly difficult to recruit.
How this was achieved
We ran a one day test with 5 users per round with 1 hour interviews for each one. The design and development agency immediately set to work on the issues identified after the session and fixed them for the next iteration. We then ran the tests again with the suggested changes incorporated and reported that a lot of the initial issues from round one testing had been improved in this round but consistent issues were occurring over the two rounds.
We also gathered user's opinions and thoughts by way of a survey at the end of the testing sessions to gain additional insights.
Testimonial
I worked with Ben and Spotless to run an expert review and user testing on the website I'm currently developing. Throughout the project Ben was great to work with, kept up communication the whole way through and delivered what we asked for. I'd definitely work with Ben and the Spotless team again
Lizzie Wrobel - Web producer - The Health Foundation
