NATIONAL BREAST SCREENING SERVICE
Transforming the way screening services are delivered using breast screening as first of type
THE PROBLEM
The breast screening service in NHS England has a vision to transform services digitally to save lives and to help people live healthier lives for longer, against a backdrop of funding restrictions and failing legacy technology.
After numerous discoveries, it became obvious that this level of investment of finance, time and people wasn’t going to help scale the kind of transformation needed to build truly user-focused services that work across screening and not just for breast screening.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Six months initially
MAKE OF THE TEAM
Service designers, interaction designers, user researchers, product manager, tech architects
KEY GOAL
To develop a modern technical infrastructure to underpin screening services and deliver a better experience and outcomes for patients.
MY ROLE
I worked with a team of external consultants including a senior service designer to define the as-is service for breast screening, with a view to this establishing the baseline for other screening services.
I brought in our internal team of designers to support the work and to build a narrative around the end-to-end journey, and worked closely with the consultant service designer to ensure alignment with our internal team and screening stakeholders.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
We established twenty personas which we organised into four key user groups: participants (eligible population for screening), breast screening office staff - BSOs, breast screening providers (clinicians who provide the service such a radiographers and mammographers) and secondary users such as external regulators, researchers, charities)
Our research showed that although the main communication method for breast screening was via letter, participants wanted choice in the channels they received comms through such as appointments and results. Many preferred digital channels to receive these over standard letter. Our research also showed that letters were still important in various formats for participants with accessibility and inclusivity needs. Clinical staff also struggled with legacy systems involving excessive manual processes and entering data multiple times causing a high risk of error. My team of designers and researchers worked on prototyping some of these experiences through a series of design sprints.
Prototyping the experience for clinicians and participants
We conducted a series of design sprints with the product team and screening subject matter experts. Our designers prototyped each experience including this one reflecting a future state digital experience for radiographers.
(Link to prototype in Figma)
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
A solid understanding of the as-is was established via landscape reviews of existing research, further user research and the development of an as-is service blueprint.
The future state was ideated through an art of the possible workshop with the product team and senior stakeholders and future journeys ideated. We ran a series of design sprints to develop hypothesis to prototype the future experience and test our designs with our key user groups. I presented back findings with the team, to our senior stakeholders in screening, some of whom also attended the design sprints to observe activity.
Work was packaged up and recommendations put forward for delivery teams to pick up.
THESE WERE SOME LEARNINGS I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT
We’ll move quicker with an SME embeded in the team
We were lucky to have had an extremely knowledgable SME working with us on the screening programme. They were able to not only provide their expertise, but also be a key gateway to other stakeholders we needed to talk to.
Effective prioritisation is important
Teams need a clear picture of what they need to work on first. This enables teams to set goals and work towards a vision. Prioritisation also helps teams plan in early work like service design and user research.
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