MHRA user research presentation

Cath Richardson!User ResearcherGovernment Digital Service @ohrworm

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agile + research

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Define your research questions

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Pick the most appropriate technique

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Define next questions, rinse and repeat

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Research to support MHRA transition

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7 phone interviews to understand existing habits and behaviour

Round 1

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Users are highly attuned to changes in guidance and legislation

What’s changed?Insight

“if there are changes to info that is published on the website, sometimes that is not so clear, and we may not even know that an MHRA interpretation or requirement has changed.”

“So because there are things changing all the time, I may have thought I was familiar with something but because it’s changed, before I can assimilate it I would need to visit the website a few times”

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Finding information is hard when you don’t know exact route or words“I would have had to go into ‘How we regulate’ and drill all the way down like a series of russian dolls until I found the documents. So I’d have to know that the document was there in the first place”

“yes because sometimes I will be looking for.. recently I was looking for something to do with reclassifying. Right say I came from a description…. and it’s actually under reclassification. Perhaps I did a search in the end, and found it.”

Which route?Insight

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Duplication and out of date information reduces trust overall“I noticed recently there's still an entry on Variations you submitted before 1 january 2010 and I would hope there weren’t really that many of those left, but that still comes up as a default….You’ve got Variations to Licences as a link, then you’ve got FAQ Administrative, Extension Applications, General, General queries. So there’s q a lot of duplication there and when you’re looking for something you’re clicking in and out of those to make sure you’ve got everything.”

Reducing trustInsight

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Alerts don’t have a long shelf life - it’s in the moment info that matters “Once we’ve checked it and decided it’s not relevant then it’s gone…Running somewhere like this is about day to day dealing with issues coming up.”

“The other thing was, there was a medicines one last year, they did a recall on some of the stocks of drugs that I knew that we had. So I can instantaneously clear both of our pharmacy stores within an hour.”

Timeliness Insight

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It’s not always clear whose responsibility it is to act on safety info“A lot of the medicine warnings we do get, it is a bit unclear at the end of the message, what as a GP I am supposed to do. It normally turns out after discussions with the chemist that it’s the chemist who needs to call batches back”

Whose responsibility? Insight

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Round 2

Online card sorting exercise to understand how people group info

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Round 3

Testing a working prototype with 10 users

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[view prototype]

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Users expect search results to relate to where they are when they search

Insight

Contextual search

• How do we indicate to users that their search has been scoped? !• What if they end up in the wrong place and search from there?!• Is there an escape route?!• How do we manage the expectations of your users?

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Users feel more sure what they need is there when they see more things they recognise in the topics list

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Confidence

• When is the list of topics too long?!• How do we help users avoid dithering?!• Testing and tweaking topic labels will help

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Titles needs to be descriptive of the content, not just a label

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Language

• How to make sure that people recognise that this content contains what they are looking for?!

• Titles that are more task based?!• Avoiding clashes between topic labels and guidance titles

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Language that is perceived as too specialist also makes users lose confidence that this is for them

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Who is this for?

• Who is this information intended for? !• Should a nurse be able to find useful information under this topic?!• Finding the balance between using specialist terms to signpost

specialists and not excluding other users who may also need to find this information

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Dedicated search tools won’t work if users aren’t aware of them

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Knowing how to look

• If the user’s expectation is to be able to use the main search then how can we support this?!

• What’s the user need for finding safety information about a drug?!• What is the user’s context for looking for this information?!• How often does the user look for this information?

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Round 4

Contextual research with targeted healthcare professionals

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Round 5

Start getting feedback from live content from users

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Interviewing users workshop

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Be a human, not a suit

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Let them tell their story

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Don’t prompt too much

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Be an active listener

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Go deeper, don’t rely on assumptions

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Activity - 5 minutes