As a default, appointments were bookable up to 8 weeks in advance in the NHS App. However, we received feedback from GP surgeries that making appointments bookable further in advance would allow them to better manage their clinics and help maintain social distancing in their surgeries.

This clinical need prompted our work to improve the appointment booking process in the NHS App. As a first step, we made appointments bookable up to 16 weeks in advance to accommodate their request.

That was just the beginning of our work to improve the process, however.

GP surgeries are not the main users of the NHS App – people, like you and me, across England are, so this is who we had to ensure the appointment booking process works for. Plus, with the added layer of complexity around the pandemic, we could not safely assume that our users would interact with the NHS App in the same way as we have seen previously.

We had to consider how our users interact with the app, and what they expect to happen when they book appointments. We used the principles of user-centred design to guide our work, and user stories were a useful method to first define the things a user would need.

We used the insights gained during user research sessions with real NHS App users to create our user stories. This gave us actionable statements that helped us understand if we were meeting the requirements of our users.

By going through user stories, we created some high-level requirements. These were used to evaluate ideas throughout the whole design process. Some examples included:

The existing components section of the NHS digital service manual was crucial to our final design outcome. This is because it enabled us to call on previous research and tested components to quickly evaluate, iterate and ideate about potential solutions. After such, we agreed upon the final design:

We agreed within the team that this design would offer our users the most effective way to book in advance, but we had to validate this with people who would actually be doing the booking. Therefore, we ran through our design ideas with our user researchers and they set up some usability tests. This meant that we were able to give real NHS App users the task of booking a clinic using the new layout to see if it worked for them or if anything needed changing.

Throughout 5 sessions, we found that all users could select a date by opening the expanders and all the users could go on to select an appointment time that was suitable for them. Plus, we got to validate that users would be likely to add the booked appointment to their phone calendar, which is especially important when considering how far in advance clinics may be booked.

All in all, the usability testing helped to reassure us that what we had designed would be right for our users before we implemented any changes. Furthermore, our work won’t end now – we will be monitoring and iterating based on live feedback from app users. So, if you’ve used the NHS App to book an appointment, let us know in the ‘Feedback’ tab on the app whether it worked for you!

Our users are at the heart of the work we do on the NHS App and we will continue to put them first so that we constantly improve the way they access primary care digitally. This year, the user-centred design process has enabled us to help ease some winter pressures across England in what can only be described as very extraordinary circumstances.