Expert Review and Testing for a UK Healthcare Charity

User testing for a new website

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK. 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.

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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.

Expert review and usability testing

Prior to any usability testing we conducted an independent expert review to highlight any areas that could be improved and likely tasks for the usability testing. After that we ran 8 usability testing sessions in London and each session lasted approximately 1 hour. The design and development agency immediately set to work on the issues identified after the session and fixed them for the next iteration.

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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.

Suggestions and improvements

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 labeling and functionality on the main navigation bar.

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After we delivered the results of the testing we also went onto work with The Health Foundation in a variety of other areas, and this included re-designing several key landing pages, based on the output from the testing, and our knowledge of how to improve the interaction design and layout.  The Health Foundation also are very passionate about accessibility, and we helped tag several of their PDF publications to improve their accessibility.

‍“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