Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital

NHS Foundation Trust

About

UK's leading providers of hospital and community-based healthcare, research and education.

Made up of 5 main hospitals with history as far back as 1700s, the Guy’s and St Thomas’ foundation dedicated stuff provide a full range of lifelong, general and specialist care. 

The problem

The NHS Guy’s and St Thomas’s trust is a complex made of five different hospitals and their patients are having troubles locating them, accessing to digital content, getting medical information quickly and end up using customer service as the main source of help.

Users tend to rely mostly on customer services as they often complain they can’t find the information they need online.

Website look and feel is outdated and branding could use some development and alignment with main NHS corporate style.

The approach:

Stakeholders interviews

to define objectives and timeline while hearing the staff point of view on current situation

(ej: overwhelmed customer service due to design service relying mostly on them instead of website)

Customers interviews

one to ones and usability testing to discover issues, content expectations and user needs while also testing the user of current search feature.

Brand workshops

leading and investigating the client’s expectations in terms of visual appeal, brand development and alignment with main NHS corporate style

User study

to analyse the final users audience: patients, caregivers and professionals and start drafting their journeys mapping

Card sorting

Testing content and naming, discovering the nomenclature issue of having both patients and professionals on the same site.

Heuristic review

Evaluation of both UX, content and design of current website and competitive analysis

Putting patients at heart: user-centred design and content

The insights:

  • Patients and caregivers are confused about medical terminology while professionals are looking for a dedicated area and expecting medical language (ej: heart condition vs cardiovascular)

  • It’s not clear there are multiple hospital locations (general perception is of only two hospitals because of the name)

  • User journeys for wayfinding are not optimal when looking for service, departments and wards

  • Users can’t easily find contact information and most of the time they are not up to date

  • Users are looking for guidance about pre and post appointment (ej which documents to bring with them) and pre and post surgeries

  • Website design viewed as outdated and in need of a refresh

  • Senior users mention the nice to have option to print the service and contact information to have a physical copy of it as reference

“I can’t seem to find heart services”
— Cardiovascular patient
“It feels a bit like a treasure hunt”
— Regular patient looking for information they need

Behaviour profiles:

Contact – I’m looking to find contact details

Appointment - I’m looking for appointment details

Travel – I’m looking at how to get to a place

Wayfinding – I want to know how to get around

Consultant – I’m looking for consultant details

Information – I’m looking for other specific information

UX Concepts and testing

Three rounds of prototype testing

  • Content prioritisation inline with user needs

  • User confidence content is up to date

  • Creating content templates

  • Service pages inline with patient pathways

  • Restructuring navigation and rethinking taxonomy

  • More efficient and accessible search user journey

search interaction and print resource feature

Search and terminology

Heart vs cardiovascular

  • Search functionality and search listing page including the option of acting on the searched item within the page (reducing ux effort)

  • Double focus for most accessible ux and keyboard navigation

  • Taxonomy to allowing double terms for same pages, depending on user’s (patient vs professional) research: heart vs cardiovascular

  • Search suggested results implemented and suggested results for no results page, to avoid end of user journey

  • Adding the possibility of printing all or some of the services page sections - with normal or enlarged text - to have this information in hand ahead of the medical appointment

Improving navigation usability and structure

  • Three levels dropdown navigation and landing pages with quick links to support navigation.

  • Separation of corporate-professional navigation from primary menu navigation for patients and search.

  • Mobile menu using one level and secondary navigation visually separated from main, landing pages links and search supporting level two and three.

Brand refresh

Defining new colours for main brand and specific departments, such as Guys Cancer and the Get involved sections.

Creating a low contrast vision friendly palette of colour and using a very accessible approach in terms of both design and content.

Including some main corporate elements to make it visually easier for users to connect the trust to main NHS.

The result

  • Usability testing confirming content and contact information are easy to find now

  • Both professionals and patients are happier with new navigation and separated sections

  • Users agreeing the new brand and site is more professional, modern and look trustworthy

  • Users aren’t overwhelming customer service as they can now access easily the content online

  • Search functionality is supporting well the site navigation, users don’t go to google to look for specific content

  • Client staff is pleased with consistency of information structure across department and new branding

Other projects

More projects to come, stay tuned!