Beyond digital: the need to truly understand users

UX Healthcare 2023 has come and gone and Alex Barker our Service Design Consultant gave a keynote talk at the event on ‘How Service Design is helping to eliminate Hepatitis C’.

The great thing about this event was that it brought together healthcare professionals, developers and design experts to talk about ways we can improve user experience in healthcare.?

One of the key shifts we advocated for was to go beyond a digital-only-focus, and to instead explore user needs and behaviours first and fully. In order to understand the wider contexts and personal scenarios that a new service has to connect with, in order to make it truly effective for all users.??

Here are some of the key thoughts that I wanted to share that relate to user-led service design, which is where the industry can make vast improvements to user experience relatively quickly…

Work to understand the wider issues and wider user journey

Rather than think of tech solutions, we need to understand entire health problems and pathways for users, and the challenges they face, in order to build the right things for them.

This is something that became really apparent in our work for the NHS, for hepatitis C elimination in the UK. Our key finding from the research was that primary risk groups had such a diverse range of barriers and problems to solve, along with greatly varying levels of digital access and digital literacy. All of which needed to be understood and addressed in order to create a service that would work effectively.??

Qualitative research allows us to go beyond risky assumptions, stereotypes, and simplistic customer personas. To contextually understand the real world problems that people are facing, in order to create solutions that work for them in their particular circumstances.

Service designs helps us to think beyond digital

A service design approach provides rich formative data, about pain points across the whole patient or user journey. We can use this to understand the triggers that exist before using a service, and what needs to happen after the service is used - as often within healthcare there needs to be an outcome that is physical, such as seeking treatment.

Indeed, within healthcare and public use, often a digital solution will not solve all of the problems for all of the people. Some won’t have digital access or might choose not to use it, therefore a wider picture of users and service (and alternative solutions) is often needed. There is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution.?

Service blueprinting shows us the bigger picture

Service blueprinting enables us to visually map a service, end-to-end, from the point of view of the customer journey, while also representing all stakeholder inputs within that journey. This provides clarity on the entire situation (before and after the service solution) and the user needs and steps that will take place within it.?

This was exceptionally useful for creating a service design for the NHS national self-testing portal for hepatitis C, with so many components and stakeholders implicated in the wider service and process.?

Some great speakers at the event also reminded me of some key principles that we practise at nuom, that are always important to keep in mind or move towards, and which complement the points above…

The need for lean UX

One of the most recurrent themes was the need for lean UX in the design process, especially in healthcare. This means a culture of fast iteration and prototyping in order to validate the product or solution that is being designed as early as possible (and before it is built!). This is something we do at nuom, but something that the wider industry is catching up to, in order to create clarity and validation and avoid any errors at the earliest stages of design.

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The need to build trust

Another key point was the need to build trust within healthcare, which can make or break a product. Trust can be created from reputable providers and known brand names of course, but there are also design elements that can greatly impact trust. These elements may be subtle, or not immediately obvious, but they can have a large impact on user adoption and satisfaction.?

The need for user testing

In order to build trust, UX has to feel right, intuitive, and seamless. This can only happen with rounds of user testing. To identify any points that might break trust in small ways and rectify them. And to user test early and often, and after a product is launched, to see if there are any further real-world issues to fix.

User research as a foundation

User research is an essential part of digital product design that helps to identify and define problems that have to be solved, and create a true understanding of user needs within a wider context.

User research is necessary at the beginning of the process to understand pain points, in order to concept, prototype, and user test. And further user research is needed during iterations to ensure that any changes to the UX are understood from the user’s perspective.

This essentially means an ongoing feedback loop with users, on what they need and how they respond to proposed solutions, to ensure we create maximum alignment and optimal outcomes.

Be user-led not feature focussed?

28% of people switch healthcare providers due to poor experience. This speaks to the growth of digital touchpoints in an industry that is still somewhat immature in how much they practise research-led user-centred design. In so far as providers don’t always ensure that new touchpoints are actually designed effectively.?

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The healthcare industry can’t just throw new platforms at people, and expect people to work around them. Instead, new digital solutions have to work around different types of users, in order to be used and trusted.?

This point then leads back to the main point of this article, which is the need to see the bigger picture, from the perspective of users, through discovery phase primary research and insight-led service design. To build solutions that connect to people’s needs, circumstances and preferences, in order to be effective.

Healthcare is complex, UX has to be simple?

Healthcare is complex, there’s lots of individual determinants - health equity issues and access issues and so on - which makes understanding user needs even more vital.?

Users are diverse, with daily strains and challenges. They will only embrace new digital solutions if they are intuitive and easy to use and preferable to the status quo, right from the start.?

Therefore healthcare requires the greatest amount of user research and user testing in order to create the empathy and objectivity required to create UX that feels helpful, in order for it to be adopted by all user groups, no matter how diverse they are.?

Or put more simply, we need to truly understand users in order to truly help them.

Note, you can watch the a recap of the insights here .