ASSESSMENT TOOL

A digital solution for NHS assurance model

THE PROBLEM

One of NHS' responsibilities is to assess the level of safety and efficiency with which their estate and facilities services are managed, this, in support of the NHS Constitution right: “You have the right to be cared for in a clean, safe, secure and suitable environment.”.

Currently, this assessment is carried manually using a combination of paper and Excel spreadsheets, which have proven onerous to those responsible of this activity as well as challenging for NHS to make the use of the information this tool should be able to provide.

The goal of this project is to move such an important task, from an Excel-based manual process, into an online solution that can also help standardised both, data gathering and data visualisation in order to support better decision making.

The discovery phase was responsible to gather requirements and user needs, as well as to prioritise features for the client's targeted launch during the first quarter of 2020. This launch would represent the first stage of a total of three devised for the entire project.

DATE

November 2019

STATUS

Discovery completed

MY ROLE

I've been responsible to lead the discovery phase, designing and delivering workshops with the client, key stakeholder and users, as well as with our multidisciplinary team in charge of the development of the new solution.

An output report was also delivered, providing an overview of the entire discovery, summarising findings, challenges, dependencies (technical and functional), recommendations and ultimately, a backlog comprehending the 3 phases of the project.

Key activities

Desk research
User research and analysis
Workshops
(Design and delivery)
User Journeys
(As-Is and To-Be)

Sketching
Wireframes
Requirements definition
Report writing

WORKSHOPS

Workshop 1

Workshop 2

Workshop 5

Workshop 1

1/5

USER JOURNEYS

User Journeys 1

User Journeys 2

User Journeys 6

User Journeys 1

1/6

THE PROCESS

The discovery phase of the project comprised a series of activities with stakeholders and users over a period of 6 weeks.

Initiation

The process consisted of initial desk research, conversations with the client and the review of documentation. Followed by the analysis and understanding of the existent solution, the different types of users and their needs; as well as the business’ objectives and aspirations.

Workshops

The first of two workshops was designed to validate assumptions and gain first-hand understanding from the users about how they interact with the current solution, the most pressing issues they face and their top priorities to be ideally solved by the new digital solution.

This workshop was delivered at the client’s location. Attendees represented all user types that currently perform the manual assessment process and that are also aimed to be served by the new tool.

We obtained:

Review and agreement of user types. Validating the existent information and consolidating types that presented overlapping.
User Journey maps for the current process (As-Is) for each user type.
User Journey maps for the future process (To-Be) for each user type. For this, users were prompted to think towards an "ideal scenario", in which the new tool was already in place and constraints were minimal.
Sketches of screens for the new solution based on the users' key activities.

The second workshop was held internally with the team responsible for the development of the new solution. The goal was to obtain a definitive “To-Be” state of the User Journeys through the consolidation of the information obtained during the first workshop, new information provided by the client and best-practices.

We obtained:

Prioritisation of features and technical dependencies
Definitive User Journey maps for the future process (To-Be) for each user type. Focusing on the core functionality of the system.
Sketches of screens for the new solution based on the users' key activities.
A backlog that will inform the planning and development of the project during its three stages.

Outputs

Two key outputs were delivered to the client from the activities previously described.

Wireframes:

Following the sketching exercises done with both the client and the project team, I created a series of wireframes to demonstrate how the final product could look like, highlighting key functionality and the rationale behind the approach.

This also allowed to illustrate some areas, tasks or flows that were not originally contemplated by the client as they currently don't exist, for example, user categorisation and management.

Outputs Report:

A ‘Discovery Outputs’ report was created to summarise the entire discovery phase, from activities, to dependencies, findings and recommendations and next steps.