Q - The Health Foundation
Q, a community of people working together to improve health and care, were looking to redesign how people apply, join and are welcomed into the community. With a goal of growing their membership, they needed to think about both the strategy and the detailed user experience.
This project was delivered in collaboration with Sophie Rankin.
User research.
To understand the experiences people were having of joining the Q community, we ran user research interviews with a small number of members and non-members. For members we mapped their journey of joining, right from deciding to join through to completing the application form, receiving a response and entering the community. With non-members we explored their perceptions, thoughts and feelings around the Q community.
Journey mapping and ideation.
Aggregating the experiences of our participants, we mapped the as-is journey of people joining the Q community. The exercise allowed us to identify several ‘quick wins’ that the team could take forward to improve the experience for potential members. Things like simplifying language, including recommended word counts for questions, clarifying between providing work or home details and providing guidance for how applications are assessed.
Some of the findings from the user research were wider themes that provided the opportunity for the Q team to think more strategically about their approach to recruiting and onboarding new members. For example, we found potential members lacked confidence when applying. We took these themes into an ideation workshop with the Q team, where we developed a series of ideas to prototype and test with members.
A snap-shot of the as-is journey we mapped of people’s experiences of joining the Q community.
We mocked up low-fidelity visuals to represent some of the ideas then used them as provocations to spark discussion with users.
Prototyping.
Mocking up the ideas as low-fidelity prototypes allowed us to test the Q team’s early thinking with members. This was not about useability testing finished products, it was about tabling thoughts as provocations for discussion to help further shape a wider redesign of the onboarding journey. We tested ideas like buddy and recommend a friend schemes. The insight from this testing fed into the refinement of these ideas ensuring the Q team were more confident about moving into a series of live pilots.
"The breadth of Joy’s experience means that they bring huge amounts to any project. The thing I value most about working with Emma is that she brings challenge to the work we do together. We now have a vast insight base for us to start thinking differently about how people apply to join Q and how they connect with others... all based on genuine user insight."
— Betty Sue-Smith, Digital Manager, Q
Building capability.
Q are starting their journey in building user centered design capability. This project was run as a close partnership with their Digital Manager to ensure the team were exposed to new tools, methods and approaches while being part of a live service design project. A small team was involved throughout with the opportunity to shadow user research sessions, take part in workshops and reflect on their learning as they went.
