Start4Life

When we were challenged to refresh the style of the site we set out to discover what users wanted.

I facilitated a number of interviews with a group of prospective mums in their first trimester, asking them about their problems: where do they look for help and information and what they would like to see on an NHS web site?

We also analysed our competitors, the most popular of which is mumsnet.

During the discovery phase we found out that our

users prefer to get information from peers, not from doctors or nurses.

They also would like to be able to search quickly and ask other users for specific information.

We decided to try to organise our content in a

different way to facilitate searches on our web site.

User centred design

Legacy contents

It was very important to find out which existing content might best suit the new web site and at the same time point out which content gaps needed to be addressed.

I worked closely with the content editors in our

team to create a preview of tips that matched our criteria.

First draft

We decided to divide the information by key stages:

Pregnancy, babies and toddlers. I created a first draft and an interactive prototype to be tested with a series of "cards".

All the tips were presented in a question format, reinforcing the idea that we were answering common questions, just as you would in a live forum.

Mobile and desktop prototypes

We tested various iterations of the prototypes. Our main assumptions were proved correct.

The navigation was clear and the users were responding very well to the new tone of voice.

Development has started and the web site will be published by the end of March 2018.