User research about literature and evidence searches for Health Education England

We were asked by Health Education England (HEE) to conduct some research on the needs of people who request evidence searches from their NHS knowledge and library service. 

This followed previous pieces of work that we carried out for HEE, in which we conducted research on the needs of users of NHS library and knowledge services and research on the needs of expert searchers.

We ran a programme of user research to understand who the users requesting evidence searches are, the reasons why they are requesting evidence searches, and how they request and receive evidence searches.

We carried out 12 one-to-one interviews with search requesters from a variety of user roles, including healthcare professionals, healthcare managers, and commissioners. We also carried out 5 remote observation sessions, analysed 342 responses to our user needs validation survey, and ran a workshop with 4 users. 

Given that the workshop was remote, we needed to find a way to carry out a journey mapping activity via video call. We used breakout rooms in Teams to divide the attendees into 2 groups, and then used Miro boards to map out the steps, tools, interactions and thoughts within each user journey.

We presented our work, including 16 prioritised user needs, to HEE stakeholders. Our findings are being used by HEE to ensure that they meet the needs of those requesting literature and evidence searches.