eConsult - 2024
Reducing NHS operations pressure with a self-serve portal
Role:
Lead Designer
Duration:
4 Weeks
Output:
Polished Designs, Research, User Testing
Background
eConsult Health is on a mission to transform the way that the NHS delivers care to patients. They are the NHS’s leading online consultation provider with over 3200 NHS GP practices.
During the pandemic in 2020, eConsult experienced unprecedented growth, putting immense pressure on the operations team. Previously, the company relied on a combination of client relationship managers (CRMs) and an operations team to customise their application for each client. This approach consistently overwhelmed the team, resulting in increasingly delayed request fulfilment times.
Eventually, clients became dissatisfied due to the inability to tailor the software to their specific needs, hindering their ability to treat patients in the best possible way.
Research & Data
Hospital admins had many needs, and my goal was to uncover the ones that impacted them most.
A review of the company’s product board revealed numerous feature requests from hospital admins, highlighting gaps in their ability to perform daily tasks efficiently. To gain a deeper understanding, I met with eight practices across the UK and visited several in person.
These conversations and observations gave me firsthand insight into the operational pressures admins faced every day, helping to ground the design process in real user needs.
Anonymised messages from ProductBoard
Insights
Our priority was to address the needs with the biggest impact.
Research revealed many requests since each practice had its own way of working. We narrowed these down to a few high-impact needs by looking at how often they came up, their value to the practice, and the effort-to-value ratio for the business. The major requests stood out
User Management
The ability to add and remove staff such as doctors, nurses, and admin personnel for quick onboarding.
Demand Management
Users wanted the ability to set daily caps or limits on the number of online consultations clinics receive, based on their capacity for the day.
Clinical/Admin Split:
Clinics have varying capabilities when it comes to handling clinical and administrative requests. To manage this effectively, they wanted the ability to categorise consultations by type and set individual limits for each category.
36%
of customers considered switching to the competition for at least one of these features
14+
The average number of times a CRM changes practice settings daily.
4.1
The average monthly customer churn rate for the company directly linked to the absence of one of these featured
Design Considerations
Constraints, considerations, and realities that guided the solution
We decided to build the application on the popular Material framework to reduce build time.
We built with Google’s MUI but kept a unique look by adding custom fonts and icons, managed seamlessly through Storybook.
Our approach was to first develop a prototype based on our findings and test each module for usability.
We created mid-fidelity prototypes and then tested it with clinicians and admins to ensure it was user-friendly and fit their needs.
The settings portal will be built in a modular way to allow for easy addition of features as needed in the future.
We followed a Lean UX approach, launching only high-value features first to ensure that we only built what was absolutely needed.
Design & Testing
Good design is tested design.
The tests were semi-structured tests that gave users specific tasks to be carried out ranging in difficulties and observed through a combination of HotJar and Mixpanel
10
Users were involved in the tests split between admin and clinical customers.
9
respondents felt that the company has shown enough promise to live up the their demands
3
users struggled with finding the pages to perform the specific task that was assigned to them.
We would need a scalable sub-menu system that does not distort the general aesthetic of the pages when they are many/few
There is a need to explain the function of each feature in everyday language as the users vary in technical abilities
We can use the portal to manage customers expectation on improvements or feature addition.
Linking each feature to the corresponding help article/video to help struggling users
Final Design
I led the design with a modular mindset, applying agile principles while ensuring every decision aligned with the long-term North Star vision. Starting with the user management module allowed us to establish the design foundations quickly, while leaving room for seamless integration of future features.
Top bar with the ability to switch between practices
Introduction of a scalable menu bar to improve navigation
Introduction of modular sub-menu items under each main menu and a short description of its function.
Educating customers about features they can expect within the coming weeks to manage their expectation.
Easy and recognisable navigation to get to a feature in 3 clicks or less
Clear and easy toggle option that explains and the current state of that feature
Extensive explanation of the action to be taken
Providing a link to help articles about the features available on the specific page
Results
Big results even bigger impact
While this is still an ongoing project at this point, the initial 2 months post-launch gave a real indication of the success we recorded on this project with some interesting metrics
3.2
Customer churn rate reduced from 4.1 as the company was able to show promise of fixing lingering issues
2h:20m
Average time we saved each practice each week in reaching out or waiting for specific settings to be done on their portal.
7.5*
CSAT score increased from an initial low of 5.8 just months prior to the launch of the portal
Learning and Conclusion
There’s a lesson in every project…
Working on a project that directly impacts doctors saving millions of patients monthly comes with its pressures, especially with the added urgency to retain customers.
The project underscores my ability to plan design projects, accommodate future additions while maintaining aesthetics and a scalable hierarchy.
It was a resounding success, attributed not only to my efforts but also to the collaboration with the entire team, particularly the engineers who worked closely with me on customising the default MUI assets.