Background
The NHS Health Check aims to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease, and some cases of dementia among adults aged 40-74. The service being developed is a new national digital channel that will sit within the NHS App and it will work alongside the existing face-to-face check.
The service includes a behavioural questionnaire and collects measurements of height, weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol to calculate a person’s 10-year Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. The results will be fed back online with personalised advice, and, as the results are automatically added to the patient’s electronic record, GP follow-on and clinical pathways will be initiated for those with higher-risks identified.
Some of the objectives of this service are to:
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1
give people more choice around where and how they complete their NHS Health Check -
2
empower users to take actions to improve their health independently -
3
enable increased overall participation -
4
provide end-to-end data on patient journeys to enable better management of CVD risk factors driving opportunities for improvement
Today in England
6.4m
people are living with CVD
375
people will die from a heart or circulatory disease
100
of them will be younger than 75
230
hospital admissions will be due to a heart attack
The problem
Not enough eligible people are completing the NHS Health Check.
Over 1.1m people undertake a NHS Health Check every year – with 3.2m people eligible. Participation has declined almost every year since 2014-15.
Hypothesis
The creation of a new national digital channel working alongside the face-to-face check will provide the choice and flexibility people want, transforming how they engage with the NHS Health Check service resulting in an increase in overall participation and better health outcomes for people in England by identifying more people at high risk of CVD.
Team
I worked closely with the core team, composed of:
- Management team
- Architecture and Data team
- Service Design team
- Engineering team
- Support and Security team
My role
As the Lead UX Designer, I had the responsibility to oversee the end-to-end design process, decisions, and documentation.
My daily tasks included:
- Presenting and leading meetings with client to understand business needs while building a trusted relationship
- Taking ambiguous requirements and mapping user jurneys based on assumptions and unsufficient information during Alpha
- Facilitating design crits and workshops with wider teams and stakeholders
- Mentoring and coaching other UX Designers on the team and delegating workload
- Collaborating on research plan and participating in user interviews and usability testing
- Working closely with the Product team to draft vision, objectives and roadmap
- Identifying user needs, building storyboards and mapping user journeys
- Building the information architecture and site map
- Leading on the creation of wireframes using the NHS and GOV design systems
- Producing interactive prototypes and designs using Figma and NHS Prototype KIT
- Iterating designs based on user feedback and clinical input
- Leading the structure of documenting design decisions, iterations, and pain points
- Advocating for inclusive design and writing accessibility criteria for dev tickets
- Owning designs from requirements through designing the solution to delivery
- Ensuring knowledge management for design best practice, quality assurance and consistency
- Collaborating in an agile multi-disciplined team by taking part in dev refinements, product and data meetings to understand technical limitations and help prioritise workload
Our work
As well as building on Discovery recommendations, a large focus during Alpha has been to learn from pilot programmes, looking at how the digital channel would need to evolve to address pain points raised by users and to create a service that could scale nationally.
The user journey
Providing a joined-up experience across all channels:
What we have done:
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Proved viability of new digital channel
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Learned from other similar services in the market
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Identified our user groups and built personas
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Engaged with local commissioners
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Got buy-in from general practice
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Built an interactive prototype of the service
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Tested our riskiest assumtions with more than 70 people across 5 rounds of testing
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Iterated prototype and ideas based on users' feedback
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Proved the unrealised increasing GP burden
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Worked on the GP IT system integration
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Researched different options for biometric testing and providers
Outcomes
In these 6 months, we:
- delivered Alpha phase on time and in budget
- passed Alpha Assessment with flying colours while meeting all 14 points of the Standard
- won the next bid and got approval to proceed with Private Beta
Some of the feedback from the clients and assessors was:
"The team has a strong, team-based approach to user research, and everyone demonstrated a solid understanding of the end users and their needs"
"The team has a strong understanding of accessibility, inclusive design principles, the design system and common components and patterns"
"The team’s user research has included a range of participants from different demographic groups and accessibility needs"
"The team’s user research and prototype testing with a range of patient users is informing design choices and iterative improvements"
"The team is working towards providing a safe and easy-to-understand service that will enable end-users to access self-serve behavioural advice for prehabilitation"
"The team demonstrated a good understanding of the problems they still need to solve for users and have a credible roadmap to address them"
Tools
Tools
Feedback
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The quality of work produced has been of a very high standard: comprehensive, well explained, delivered on time. The team have consistently responded professionally when faced with challenges that have arisen throughout the project. All team members communicate very effectively and demonstrate confidence in not only their own field of expertise, but also when required to update on wider work being delivered by the team. We are particularly grateful to the support received through attendance at potentially challenging meetings and work has always been undertaken in a way that we have felt included and the process very visible.
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Despite being on a team with a lot of senior people, Savina has not been afraid to speak up, using her previous experience to get across why e.g., a certain design or pattern was chosen. This helps build confidence within the team, knowing that we’re designing things in the right way, aligned with the right standards. She created and has managed a very complex Figma prototype really well, showing good core competencies. In particular, the speed with which the team were able to start using the prototype to encourage discussion and collaboration ahead of testing with users was really impressive.
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Following the team successfully passing the Alpha Assessment I wanted to specifically recognise the fantastic contribution Savina has made to that success. The assessors made reference to the team's strong understanding of the NHS Design System, Using common components & patterns, iterating the prototype and informing design choices based on user research. Which speaks for itself in terms of Savina input and approach. She is extremely knowledgeable with an excellent eye for detail. She knows the Service Design Manual for GOV.UK and the NHS inside out. She works quickly and thoroughly.
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Savina has started to adapt various GOV.UK patterns for a health experience which has been important to ensure making a complex service as easy as possible to use. Savina is very detail oriented and questions each step of the journey to make sure we're doing the hard work, so the user does not have to. Her approach is thorough, and she strives for the absolute best quality. She has been working collaboratively with the UCD, product and tech teams, her technical experience is incredibly high. She is constantly thinking about the reality and delivery approach of a solution, referencing from best practices.
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I really admire Savina’s drive to succeed for perfection for the user, she is a huge advocate for user centred design and aims to design for all users- especially those with accessibility needs. She is a fantastic designer through and through and I am very happy that I was selected to be mentored by her and I can see why. From observing how she designs and makes decisions, along with her reasoning for changes- she is a confident designer that goes above and beyond to learn new things showing a willingness to improve her skillset and that is one of the big things I admire about her.
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I've been really impressed with how quickly she's been able to turn around the initial version and any edits to help support user research, stakeholder engagement and for the client to be able to share themselves internally. Savina is able to provide great design input throughout which is focused on the user, and is able to communicate this in an approachable but authoritative way. She will always make sure work is done to her exacting standards. She challenges design decisions and presents prototypes to the customer with confidence.
Case studies
Leading design iterations and documentation during Alpha
Strategy
Design leadership
Analytical thinking
Research & Testing
Cross-functional collaboration
Problem-solving
Mentoring
Documentation
Prototyping
"Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future."