The redesign of the NHS Opendata platform is a one-for-all solution designed for a diverse group of users, each with their unique requirements. The new platform is a reliable source of information for everything related to publicly accessible medical data collected by the NHS. In addition to providing access to data, the new platform also offers a wide range of interesting articles based on data from the platform.
My role
During this project, I was able to gain experience working for a client abroad. Both on location and remotely. I was responsible for designing a suitable concept and creating associated UX deliverables such as personas, wireframes, screenflows, interactive prototypes, and documentation.
About the NHS Scotland
In 2019 I worked with the NHS Scotland for a few months on a redesign of their Opendata platform. The platform gives visitors an insight into everything related to medical data in Scotland. For example, data about hospitals or general practitioners, but also data about certain diseases and where they occur most. I acquired this project through Wallscope, a software development company based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Wallscope has been working with the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS Scotland for a long time to realize their digital transformation. The NHS Scotland was aware that the current Opendata platform was outdated and no longer met the requirements of the now much more diverse group of users. It was time for a redesign.
During this project, I collaborated with Stijn van der Gragt, a fellow UX Designer and friend of mine, to work on this project.
Before the project, the NHS itself had already conducted several studies describing the problem with the current Opendata platform. At the start of the project, I was handed a customer engagement report provided by the NHS that described four different target groups, their goals, and the problems they’re experiencing with the current platform.
The Curious – people who might not know exactly what they want when they visit the platform. They will be drawn in through other sources and will go as deep as they like. Better known as the general public. This doesn’t necessarily need to be a doctor or medical student, but anyone with interest in the medial world.
The Focused – people who know exactly what they want. They want to look at a particular set of metrics, or a particular location or group of locations, targets, or specific conditions. They will go directly to what they want and they explore from there. This can be, for example, people researching a specific topic.
The Detailed – people who want to find out more about the data. They like to understand all the background or metadata so they can understand what is going on. They will go straight to what they want and get the details behind the data. This can be, for example, a data analyst.
The Diggers – people who use data all the time. They are skilled in the modern methods of data access and want to get as much access as possible. They will mostly just want the raw data but might want the context of that data too.
Design Challenge
Redesign the NHS Opendata platform so it will meet the requirements of all four different target groups.
After digging through the customer engagement report I wanted to validate it with the actual users to see if there are more requirements I had to take into account for the new platform. Also, Wallscope, the company I worked with during the project, took the initiative to organize a design sprint together with the NHS and people from the target groups, actual users. Two weeks after the start of the project I took a plane to Scotland to meet up with them. The days in Scotland were very productive and I left with a solid first version of an idea I could work on for the remaining time of the project.
Also, it was now more clear what the users of the Opendata platform wanted. I had strong research to summarize the different users into personas.
After I got back to The Netherlands I continued working on further designing the new idea for the Opendata platform and getting it ready to test. I wanted to test the concept to find out if it suited the requirements of the users.
With the first concept, I tried to design a solution that suited the wishes of all four different target groups. This was complex because each target group had very different requirements. That is why I also wanted to quickly validate the concept with users to find out whether I had chosen the right path. See below some screenshots of the first version of the design.
One of the tests I performed was with a nurse working in a hospital. I wanted to know what she thought of the concept and whether she would like to see this in practice. An important insight emerged from this test. See the quote below.
A nurse working in a hospital:
“I get the point why people would be interested in medical data. But I would not use a platform like this. Unless the platform is providing more context about the data. Like for example stories based on the data.”
During the test, the nurse said that she regularly read magazines about the medical world. She said that she was very interested in stories related to her field and that a platform such as NHS Opendata could perhaps do something with this. This insight made me realize that somewhere during the design process I missed the fact that by just providing cold, hard data a lot of potential users would be forgotten. So after the test, I went back to the drawing board to improve the design.
The goal for this iteration was to make the new platform even more attractive for one of our target groups: the curious, or the general public. These are people that are interested in the medical world. They don’t necessarily need to be doctors or medical students, but anyone with interest in the medical world. My goal was to improve the platform to make it more attractive and useful to use for them.
During this iteration, the goal was to make the data more interesting for the users. I looked back at the test with the nurse, she liked stories related to the medical world. I thought it would be interesting to investigate whether stories and articles could be a valuable addition to the Opendata platform. So after some brainstorming and ideation, I decided that, next to giving the user access to all the datasets, I also wanted to provide them stories and articles based on that data. In this way, the platform could give them more context of a dataset. It could provide a user experience where someone without medical knowledge still understands what the data on the platform means.
See the image above how this is done in the new NHS Opendata platform. The image above shows an article. Whenever something is said or claimed about the data, it is highlighted. On the right side of the article, the source is stated so that readers can check for themselves which dataset was used to draw a specific conclusion. In this way, the articles on the platform are reliable, because it allows users to perform fact-checking. An article writer cannot publish an article if he cannot provide a source for the stated conclusions.
Wallscope, the software development company associated with the NHS Scotland, told me that it is technically possible to use a technology called Natural Language Processing (NLP) on the search function of the platform. This is something that developers of Wallscope can build. Together with Wallscope, I decided to research how this technology could fit into the new platform.
A bit of theory. We all know traditional search engines like Google. You type in a few terms that you can search for and the search engine will show you the results. This is called Term Based Searching. Due to the extremely rapid growth of technological possibilities in the world, it is now also possible to ask a search engine questions in a way that corresponds to how you would do that if you asked another person a question. For example, Siri or Google Home. These products use Natural Language Processing to process the question asked and show answers to the user. During this project, I investigated how the new NHS Opendata platform can make use of this technology. Why? Because the new platform should be accessible to everyone. The NHS is associated with the government of Scotland and governments often consider product accessibility very important. Worldwide there are many people who, for example, are visually impaired. Using a screen is difficult or sometimes even impossible for this group of people. Thinking about possibilities to offer this group the possibility to use the platform is valuable. See below a piece of the flow of Natural Language Processing applied on the Opendata platform. The first screen shows the user typing in a question or talking to a voice interface. The second screen shows the answer to the question asked. When the user is using a voice interface, the answer will be read out loud.
After it was clear which direction the new Opendata platform should go, I designed an interactive prototype to test it again. During this second usability test, the feedback I got was very positive. The people who tested the concept liked the fact that they could read articles about the datasets and also understood the reason behind the decision to add a voice user interface to the concept. During the tests, it became clear that all of the four different target groups were positive about the redesigned Opendata platform.
Of course, there were still a few things that could be improved. These were little things. For the most part, the prototype of the new Opendata platform was clear. The last few weeks of the project I spent fine-tuning the prototype. I processed the results of the usability tests and made a prototype in Principle, an interface design tool that allowed me to design some beautiful micro-interactions and animations. This brought the prototype to life. It made it feel a lot more real.
The final result of this project was a complete redesign of the NHS Opendata platform taking into account all the four different types of users. It is a one-for-all solution that functions as a reliable source of information. See below for some more details about the final result of this project.
The new NHS Opendata platform offers the user reliable sources of information by combining datasets and articles. The user can "casually" browse for articles starting at the home page. On the home page, a couple of popular articles are displayed. If the user wants to browse all the articles, he can click on the "view more" button to browse all the available articles. When reading an article, all parts related to a dataset are highlighted so that the user can easily visit the source (the dataset) related to the statements made in an article.
On the existing platform, the NHS organizes datasets in different categories and sub-categories. With casual browsing applied in our concept, the user can easily browse for datasets in those categories.
Some datasets are based on geographical data. With the new NHS Opendata platform, the user can plot datasets on a map. For example, in the screenflow below, the flow of plotting the "General Practitioners Contact Details" dataset on the map is displayed. this dataset contains the contact details of all GP's in Scotland and their location (hospital etc.)
The new platform contains a powerful search engine. This gives the user the ability to search for articles and datasets using search terms.
In addition to term-based search, the NHS wanted to include Natural Language Processing as a way of searching for content. With the new platform, the user can naturally type questions. Say, for example, you want to know how many general practitioners there are in Edinburgh. You can either type "How many GP's does Edinburgh have?" or you can click on the microphone to start interacting with the voice-based interface. Using a voice interface, I was able to make the platform accessible for people less able to use a screen-based interface. Since the target group of this project was so wide, taking accessibility into account was important.
The final concept is a platform that is easy to use and meets the requirements of all four different target groups. Also, it pursues one of the business goals of the NHS: making the open data transparent and accessible for the people of Scotland. The solution that now stands is a good basis but still requires some further development. More and more extensive testing is needed to further validate the concept. During the time I worked on this project, taking more tests did not fit within the time frame. However, I have included this in my recommendation to the NHS because it is very important to do this to validate the feasibility of the concept.
Thanks to the very good and professional collaboration with Wallscope and the NHS, I was able to design a solution that is proven to be working. I would like to say thank you to everyone involved in the project because I had a good, fun, and educational time from the beginning to the end.