1) Understand

To get up to speed with the project I reviewed blogs, social media and webcasts of past events, read NHS documentation on organisation structure and policy and spoke with team members that had been involved with the process so far. I ran stakeholder interviews with the CEOs of three of the partner organisations to gain understanding and insight into what their expectations were for the project.

2) Initial workshops

There was a huge scope and many disparate ideas and opinions from the stakeholders so I ran initial workshops with them to get everyone on the same page and bring a coherent narrative to what we were trying to achieve. From this we were able to set out a clear goal for the project and to gain a shared understanding of what success would look like.

3) User journey

Using index cards we mapped out the entire user journey for the project, identifying the most important areas of interaction. These key areas were expanded on with whiteboard sketches and paper prototypes which enabled shared understanding at an early stage, removed confusion and encouraged discussion around areas that were being interpreted in different ways.

4) Personas

To help get everyone approaching the problems from a users perspective we created eight user personas that represented the wide spectrum of users of NHS Citizen. We gathered data from the NHS, ONS, 2011 Census and previous workshops to create a realistic representation of the diverse range of users we would need to consider.

5) Wireframes

With the user flow, paper prototypes and whiteboard sketches, clickable wireframes were created to enable everyone to get a feel for how the process would work and feel on a computer. These were then used to walk through as a user and to see if the journey still worked and was in-line with the wider project objectives. These encouraged conversation between the teams and organisations and enabled alterations and amendments to be made to the process.

6) Prototypes

Bringing together all of the work done so far a low fi prototype was created in Axure which gave a more complete view of how all areas would work together and to allow for more detailed conversations. After feedback and adjustments a final high fidelity prototype was created in Axure. This would be used at the 2 day event and allow users to get an understanding of how the platform would work.

7) Communication

Throughout this stage of the project developers were kept informed of the progress and invited in to key meetings to ensure that the designs could be delivered and to get running estimates on technical implications and delivery time.The project also involved working with three specialist platforms:

• flying binary - data collection and analysis
• mydex - one of 8 government approved online identity providers
• your priorities - online debate platform

I liaised and worked with staff from these organisations throughout to ensure that the proposed direction was feasible and deliverable for them and the project.

8) Bristol event

All the work so far had been done in preparation for a 2 day event that would be held in Bristol. NHS board members, staff and the general public would attend to give feedback on the progress made so far. Myself and another UX designer organised the room that was to be used for user research and feedback, setting up user tests, presentations and interactive areas as part of the two day schedule.

9) User testing

User test sessions were run with attendees to discover what the platform was like to use, whether it had met their needs and objectives and to assess whether it fitted with their overall expectations and opinions of the wider NHS Citizen project. The prototype received high praise for its ability to clarify many of the confusing terms and workflows that had been presented in past events and to finally enable them to visualise what it might look like.

10) Presentation

On the first day the user experience room received a lot of attention from attendees and was unable to meet demand. To ensure everyone was able to stay involved in the process and have input on the process I ran a presentation with around 50 people to walk them through the prototype and afterwards ran a Q&A session.