Discovery on NSHCS’s e-portfolio service
The National School of Healthcare Science’s Digital Team needed to decide how to progress their national e-portfolio service used by healthcare science trainees, training officers and assessors across the NHS.
The contract for their existing, ageing e-portfolio service was coming up for renewal.
They procured us [Lagom] to run a GDS Service Manual Discovery to gather the user research evidence they needed to make a user-centred decision to either continue with and improve the existing service, pursue an off-the-shelf product or build a bespoke solution.
We identified, validated and prioritised what users actually needed from the service, to then assess how well those user needs were being met (or not).
We engaged with trainees, training officers, and assessors from across the NHS Scientist Trainee Programme (STP).
We conducted 1-2-1 user interviews, workshops, surveys, and usability testing sessions with end users.
We identified and logged 59 user needs around recording, submitting, and assessing evidence of trainee learning and competency.
The needs were enriched by the context, behaviours, motivations, and triggers we drew out from our research.
We validated those needs in a survey with 347 respondents – a significant proportion of the user base – for the School’s Digital Team to confidently prioritise their user needs backlog based on the evidence.
The Team and senior stakeholders endorsed our detailed report and its thorough recommendations that spanned user experience, content, technical and governance issues.
The Team took our findings and recommendations to review options which could meet the prioritised needs.
They proceeded to review off-the-shelf options, before selecting and successfully implementing a tool called OneFile to replace OLAT.
“Throughout the project it was always an absolute pleasure to work with Lagom. I would recommend Lagom unreservedly for anyone seeking a robust Discovery project, evidence of user need and recommendations about how to proceed in complex circumstances.”
Stuart Sutherland, Head of Digital, National School of Healthcare Science, Health Education England
